In Nigeria, our work on tracking progress and promoting the use of data for decision making in Gombe State will be completed this year. A final Data Driven Learning Workshop is taking place in the second quarter of the year, as well as a final dissemination event in late 2019.

Aligned with this we have been busy analysing our data on improving coverage measurement, including new evidence on the validity of different methods to measure coverage in maternal and newborn health and new evidence to help us understand respectful maternity care in this setting.

In Lagos State, we added an exciting new piece of work to the IDEAS portfolio in 2018 in the form of an evaluation of a quality improvement initiative and are looking forward to a first phase of data collection starting in March 2019.

In Ethiopia, the findings from the evaluation of the Community Based Newborn Care programme are ready and the final report will be launched in Ethiopia within the first quarter of the year.

Additionally, the Data Informed Platform for Health (DIPH) work, to support use of data for decision-making at district level, is gaining momentum with a number of workshops and meetings taking place.

Findings from the research to understand quality improvement in Ethiopia are taking shape with a number of publications in the pipeline for 2019. This includes work looking into causes for unauthorised absenteeism in Ethiopia’s health system and a qualitative study of factors affecting facility delivery.

Finally, our work on sustainability at scale is progressing quickly. All data collection for the study looking at the sustainability of the Village Health Worker Scheme in Gombe is completed and analysis is ongoing. This will come together in a third research brief in the second quarter of 2019, as well as planned journal publications. Interviews for the three-country study looking at sustainability and scalability of innovations are almost completed and initial findings will be presented in the course of the year.