Successful Programmes

The German Health Practice Collection is a series of reports on successful German-supported development cooperation programmes. In each publication, concrete examples of 'good practice' or 'promising practice' in health, social protection or multi-sectoral HIV programming are presented. The aim is to provide an overview of the range of approaches that German Development Cooperation supports in these fields.

Up until April 2010 this series of publications was called 'German HIV Practice Collection' and its focus was on HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is why the majority of the currently available publications describe approaches in these areas. 'Health Systems' and 'Social Protection' have now been added to our thematic fields and we expect publications on German-supported programmes in these areas in the near future.

Find 'successful programmes' in:

What is a good practice or a promising practice?

There is no universally accepted definition of a "best practice."  However, as the definitions below indicate, a "best practice" is a practice that upon rigorous evaluation, demonstrates success, has had an impact, and can be replicated.

  • United Nations Population Fund: The UNFPA Glossary of Monitoring and Evaluation Terms defines best practices "as planning or operational practices that have proven successful in particular circumstances and which are used to demonstrate what works and what does not and to accumulate and apply knowledge about how and why they work in different situations and contexts." [See Glossary of Monitoring and Evaluation Terms].
  • UNESCO: UNESCO describes best practices as having four common characteristics: "they are innovative; they make a difference; they have a sustainable effect; and they have the potential to be replicated and to serve as a model for generating initiatives elsewhere." [See Successful Projects Related to Poverty and Social Exclusion].
  • Advance Africa: Advance Africa, which was funded by USAID to collect and share best practices, states: "A best practice is a specific action or set of actions exhibiting quantitative and qualitative evidence of success together with the ability to be replicated and the potential to be adapted and transferred. Best practices represent the 'Gold Standard' of activities and tools that can be implemented to support program objectives." [See Best Practices Compendium].

In contrast, the term "promising practice" is used to describe methods and approaches that have not necessarily undergone multiple external evaluations or replications in different contexts. And yet, they have shown results and offer ideas about what works best in a given situation. They often include examples of how not to do something in a "Lessons learned" section.

Which are the selection criteria?

Criteria for promising or good practice

• Effectiveness
•Transferability
•Participatory and empowering approach
•Gender sensitivity
•Quality of monitoring and evaluation
•Innovation
•Comparative cost-effectiveness
•Sustainability

For the German Health Practice Collection, a group of health and HIV experts with a shared interest in sharing successful experiences as well as challenges in their work defined the following selection criteria (see box):

An editorial board of experts from German development organisations at head offices and in programmes in partner countries jointly rank proposals and decide which methods and approaches should be documented. Only those that meet all (good practice) or the majority (promising practice) of the criteria and are approved as ‘state of the art’ by at least two independent experts with renowned expertise in the particular field will be published in the German Health Practice Collection.

Each publication has a dedicated peer review section that explains how the peer reviewers judged the given method or approach in relation to these criteria. At the end of each publication, a summary of this review is given.

References:

1. Sacket DL, Rosenberg WMC, Gray JAM, Haynes RB, Richardson WS. Evidence-based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. BMJ 1996; 312:71-72.
2. Knowledge for Health Project, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Communication Programs (CCP), Family Health International(FHI), Management Sciences for Health (MSH), http://info.k4health.org/practices.shtml

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