Today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and fellow foreign ministers are participating in a meeting to make specific, time-bound commitments and take concrete steps to end the COVID-19 crisis and build back from this pandemic.

But will they actually address the fundamental issues of COVID vaccine access and agree to invest in global manufacturing to address this pandemic and prepare better for the future?

These are exactly the issues that award-winning journalist Stephanie Nolen raised on our November 4th webinar, Reality check about “global” COVID-19 vaccine production. You can catch the conversation with Nolen in this recording, where she explores what she learned reporting her New York Times story, Here’s Why Developing Countries Can Make mRNA COVID Vaccines, and answers advocates’ questions. She was joined by Public’s Citizen’s Zain Rizvi in discussions about the powerful lessons learned from the fight for global equity in HIV treatment, and why the world cannot donate its way to ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nolen lays out the arguments made by the pharmaceutical industry and details how each argument is answered from experts in the field. It’s a picture of a future where strong vaccine manufacturing capacity, established in every region of the world, supports vaccine equity, and a resilient global health system that is prepared for the next pandemic.

At AVAC, we consider the discussion essential listening, or reading.

Quick links to these and related resources

• Webinar recording: Reality check about “global” COVID-19 vaccine production
• Breaking the Bottlenecks to COVID-19 Access infographic
• AVAC’s recording archive of webinars on COVID-19

Award-winning journalist Stephanie Nolen joined AVAC on Thursday to discuss the findings and backstory of her recent New York Times investigation,”Here’s Why Developing Countries Can Make mRNA COVID Vaccines.”

In this webinar, Stephanie, AVAC and partners explored where we are in the fight to bring COVID mRNA vaccine manufacturing to the places where doses are needed most, in countries where vaccine access has been grievously stalled. We talked through her report and the parallels with HIV.

Watch the recording of Reality check about “global” COVID-19 vaccine production.

Stephanie Nolen covers global health for the New York Times. She has reported on public health, economic development and humanitarian crises from more than 80 countries around the world. She has a long history as an HIV journalist and is the author of several books, including “28 Stories of AIDS in Africa”.

Kevin Fisher is AVAC’s Director of Policy, Data and Analytics.

Measuring the impact and meaning of advocacy can be difficult. Often goals are achieved or real progress is made, but documenting the role of advocates in those successes can be a challenge. At the same time, campaigns may not achieve every goal to change policies, fund programs or pass legislation, but still have advanced an issue, broken new ground or taken important steps. Those evaluating campaigns may not be able to show the impact of advocacy or see the signals of progress. Yet it’s critical to assess strategies in real time. AVAC has attempted to maintain a close eye on its work, gauging both success and areas where more work or different thinking is needed.

Through the Coalition to Accelerate & Support Prevention Research (CASPR), designed by AVAC in collaboration with key partners and supported by USAID, we created an evaluation tool entitled Simple, Participatory Assessment of Real Change or SPARC. It’s a participatory system designed to identify outcomes and place advocates at the heart of the evaluation process. As used in CASPR, SPARC harvests “outcome stories” from partners, reviewing these stories across the CASPR network in sessions dubbed a SPARC-fest. Fellow advocates hear the stories, provide feedback, ask questions and test ideas. It is, in a way, a system of peer review for advocates.

Former AVAC staffer Jules Dasmarinas and consultant Rhonda Schlangen discuss AVAC’s SPARC program in a special issue of New Directions for Evaluation, titled Pushing boundaries: Advocacy evaluation and real-time learning in an HIV prevention research advocacy coalition in sub-Saharan Africa.

Why SPARC?

In 2016, AVAC received funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop and implement the CASPR program. CASPR began with its own monitoring evaluation and learning (MEL) system to document outcomes and track indicators of progress. But given the breadth of CASPR partners, AVAC sought a more participatory and inclusive approach that would capture nuances and share lessons for success. SPARC grew from this impulse. SPARC provides a platform for all CASPR members to identify signs of progress and frame outcomes across the Coalition’s priorities. SPARC enables CASPR members and AVAC project staff to see themselves as active contributors in the evaluation process. SPARC demystifies evaluation, expands the discourse, cultivates innovation and informs the advocacy.

As Jules and Rhonda found, SPARC highlighted the following:

• Participants are connected through shared goals and are incentivized to invest in developing relationships and trust. This enables SPARC participants to build off a common foundation and use the process to develop a more nuanced and useful analysis of their collective progress.
• SPARC is integrated into forums that network members use to collaborate and plan their work. This enables SPARC to seamlessly feed into planning, which is actionable learning. By demonstrating immediate application and benefits, SPARC is less likely to be stigmatized as an evaluation process.
• Program managers intentionally calibrate SPARC to integrate and balance with other demands on network participants’ time through exploratory conversations with evalu- ators.
• Evaluators take a “work ourselves out of a job” approach to ensure focus is on sup- port and facilitation of substantive participation. Calibrating evaluators’ role with an eye toward expanding ownership of network members enables evaluators to identify opportunities to support SPARC processes, such as categorizing outcomes that partners may not have time or feel well equipped to conduct.

Where to, SPARC?

Advocacy programs often face erratic funding and questions about their value. Rigorous and multiple evaluation strategies for the advocacy field are important for both prioritizing effective work, but also making the case for supporting advocacy. New advocacy evaluation tools, like SPARC , help advocates show the pace of progress and real impact on their way to achieving major goals. By design, SPARC is a dynamic approach and can be adapted to other coalitions or movements that aspire to learn from all voices in the evaluation process. One AVAC partner, PZAT has an initiative adapting SPARC to its work with the COMPASS Africa project, and AVAC is working with PZAT and others as we update our overarching agenda for monitoring, evaluation and learning across all that we do.

In this Advocates Network, a blog by AVAC’s Kevin Fisher offers a deep dive into an innovative model, SPARC, to show the impact of advocacy.

In September, the publication New Directions for Evaluation featured an article on Pushing boundaries: Advocacy evaluation and real-time learning in an HIV prevention research advocacy coalition in sub-Saharan Africa. Written by former AVACer Jules Dasmarinas and consultant Rhonda Schlangen, the article discusses Simple, Participatory Assessment of Real Change or SPARC, a new model for evaluating the impact of advocacy.

Launched in 2017 as part of our Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (CASPR), SPARC offers participants an inclusive process to gain insights, mark progress, and identify successes in advocacy work that can be difficult to assess. Advocacy wins are not always found in the number of new laws passed or dollars distributed. The most important steps sometimes cannot be counted, but they can be understood. Read Kevin’s blog to learn more…

Putting the “L” in Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) — a journal review of AVAC’s SPARC program

By Kevin Fisher

Measuring the impact and meaning of advocacy can be difficult. Often goals are achieved or real progress is made, but documenting the role of advocates in those successes can be a challenge. At the same time, campaigns may not achieve every goal to change policies, fund programs or pass legislation, but still have advanced an issue, broken new ground or taken important steps. Those evaluating campaigns may struggle to see and show the impact of advocacy or the signals of progress. Yet it’s critical to assess strategies in real time. At AVAC, we maintain a close eye on our work, gauging both success and areas where more attention or different thinking is needed.

Through the Coalition to Accelerate & Support Prevention Research (CASPR), designed by AVAC in collaboration with key partners and supported by USAID, we created an evaluation tool entitled Simple, Participatory Assessment of Real Change, or SPARC. It’s a participatory system designed to identify outcomes and place advocates at the heart of the evaluation process. As used in CASPR, SPARC harvests “outcome stories” from partners, reviewing these stories across the CASPR network in sessions dubbed a SPARC-fest. Fellow advocates hear the stories, provide feedback, ask questions and test ideas. It is, in a way, a system of peer review for advocates.

Former AVAC staffer Jules Dasmarinas and consultant Rhonda Schlangen discuss AVAC’s SPARC program in a special issue of <New Directions for Evaluation. Pushing boundaries: Advocacy evaluation and real-time learning in an HIV prevention research advocacy coalition in sub-Saharan Africa and it’s an important read for advocates.

Why SPARC?

In 2016, AVAC received funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop and implement the CASPR program. CASPR began with its own monitoring evaluation and learning (MEL) system to document outcomes and track indicators of progress. But given the breadth of CASPR partners, AVAC sought a more participatory and inclusive approach that would capture nuances and share lessons for success. SPARC grew from this impulse. SPARC provides a platform for all CASPR members to identify signs of progress and frame outcomes across the Coalition’s priorities. SPARC enables CASPR members and AVAC project staff to see themselves as active contributors in the evaluation process. SPARC demystifies evaluation, expands the discourse, cultivates innovation and informs the advocacy.

As Jules and Rhonda found, SPARC highlighted the following:

1. Participants are connected through shared goals and are incentivized to invest in developing relationships and trust. This enables SPARC participants to build off a common foundation and use the process to develop a more nuanced and useful analysis of their collective progress.
2. SPARC is integrated into forums that CASPR members use to collaborate and plan their work. This enables SPARC to seamlessly support planning. SPARC is learning that leads to action. By demonstrating immediate application and benefits, SPARC is less likely to be stigmatized as an evaluation process.
3. Program managers intentionally calibrate SPARC to integrate and balance with other demands on members’ time.
4. Evaluators take a “work ourselves out of a job” approach to ensure focus is on support, keeping an eye on expanding member ownership of the SPARC process.

Where to, SPARC?

At AVAC partner our commitment to SPARC is ongoing. PZAT, has an initiative that is adapting SPARC to its work with the COMPASS Africa project. PZAT, AVAC and others are continually updating our overarching agenda for monitoring, evaluation and learning across all that we do. It’s essential work. Advocacy programs often face erratic funding and questions about their value. Rigorous and multiple strategies for evaluating advocacy are important both to prioritize effective work and to make the case for supporting advocacy. By design, SPARC is a dynamic approach and can be adapted to other coalitions or movements that aspire to learn from all voices in the evaluation process, a model with much to offer the field. New tools for evaluating advocacy, like SPARC, help advocates show the pace of progress and demonstrate real impact on their way to achieving major goals.