SME WG Committee and Task Forces:

• Surveillance Practice and Data Quality (SP&DQ) Committee
• Community Health Task Force

Purpose / Rationale:

The purpose of the SME WG is to facilitate alignment of partners on strategies and best practices for developing effective systems to implement malaria surveillance and monitor and evaluate malaria control programmes. It also identifies emerging research questions and needs related to the implementation of surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation (SME) initiatives and communicates these to appropriate partners.

Functions of the Working Group:

Convene: the SME WG brings together a group of individuals from institutional partners who are well versed in the science of SME as well as the programmatic needs and implications to advise on, and advocate for, improved SME of the RBM Initiative.

Co-ordinate: by bringing the Partners together, the SME WG gives a forum for the Partners to co-ordinate their efforts in SME. Key functions:

• Supporting coordination/harmonization of SME activities (data collection, analysis, dissemination) among the partners,
• Identifying and prioritizing critical action steps for country, regional and global SME work to assure that action is taken by the relevant group(s) to achieve quality SME in a timely fashion
• Identifying critical bottlenecks arising from SME activities and organizing smaller committees and task forces to address the questions and provide recommendations on issues
• Promote operational research to support evidence-based, efficient programme implementation and the use of SME tools.
• Identifying and recommending strategies for addressing the needs for capacity building in SME at all levels
• Developing and maintaining consensus around SME strategies across partners and institutions
• Developing and providing technical guidance on selection and definition of indicators for national, inter-country and global reporting
• Providing technical guidance on appropriate data collection methods, analytic strategies, and dissemination of recommendations
• Monitoring changing needs for SME as country programs, and the RBM Initiative itself, develop further

Facilitate Communication: by bringing Partners together, the SME WG is a forum for communication and mutual learning. Key functions:

• Advising the RBM Board on appropriate monitoring frameworks for RBM initiatives
• Keeping RBM partners informed of developments within their institutions and other initiatives that are relevant for SME work.
• Informally advocating for increased attention to and resources for monitoring and evaluation activities within the RBM Secretariat and the members’ home institutions
• Other activities pertinent to SME as requested by the RBM Board.

The purpose of SME WG SP&DQ Committee is to improve the visibility of surveillance and data quality improvement initiatives, and to harmonize and streamline global coordination of surveillance-related efforts. The committee was established in May 2021 with the specific objectives to:

• Disseminate through SME WG Secretariat and RBM, information on implementing partners’ current use of surveillance operational tools, and improve implementation and partner coordination relating to their use and uptake
• Dynamically monitor initiatives and the implementation of associated tools and practices and provide updates to the SME WG whenever necessary.
• Document pros and cons of monitoring and data quality tools and activities, as well as lessons learned from their implementation through RBM SME WG Secretariat.
• Identify, the operational surveillance priorities of the National Malaria Control Programmes (NMCPs) through the SME WG Secretariat to enable further support the uptake and adaptation of the tools.

For more details please refer to the SP&DQ ToR and Fundamentals documents available in the resources.

For further information about the SME WG, please refer to the SME WG terms of reference.