RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Monitoring ‘monitoring’ and evaluating ‘evaluation’: an ethical framework for monitoring and evaluation in public health
JF Journal of Medical Ethics
JO J Med Ethics
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 31
OP 35
DO 10.1136/medethics-2012-100680
VO 39
IS 1
A1 Vijayaprasad Gopichandran
A1 Anil Kumar Indira Krishna
YR 2013
UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/39/1/31.abstract
AB Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is an essential part of public health programmes. Since M&E is the backbone of public health programmes, ethical considerations are important in their conduct. Some of the key ethical considerations are avoiding conflicts of interest, maintaining independence of judgement, maintaining fairness, transparency, full disclosure, privacy and confidentiality, respect, responsibility, accountability, empowerment and sustainability. There are several ethical frameworks in public health, but none focusing on the monitoring and evaluation process. There is a need to institutionalise the ethical review of M&E proposals. A theoretical framework for ethical considerations is proposed in this paper. This proposed theoretical framework can act as the blueprint for building the capacity of ethics committees to review M&E proposals. A case study is discussed in this context. After thorough field testing, this practical and field-based ethical framework can be widely used by donor agencies, M&E teams, institutional review boards and ethics committees.