Exploring approaches to weighting estimates of facility readiness to provide health services used for estimating input-adjusted effective coverage: a case study using data from Tanzania.

The ideal approach for calculating effective coverage of health services using ecological linking requires accounting for variability in facility readiness to provide health services and patient volume by incorporating adjustments for facility type into estimates of facility readiness and weighting facility readiness estimates by service-specific caseload. The aim of this study is to compare the ideal caseload-weighted facility readiness approach to two alternative approaches: (1) facility-weighted readiness and (2) observation-weighted readiness to assess the suitability of each as a proxy for caseload-weighted facility readiness. We utilised the 2014-2015 Tanzania Service Provision Assessment along with routine health information system data to calculate facility readiness estimates using the three approaches.

Explaining progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4 for child survival in Tanzania.

Background: During the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era (1990-2015) the government in Mainland Tanzania and partners launched numerous initiatives to advance child survival including the comprehensive One Plan for Maternal Newborn and Child Health in 2008-2015 and a "sharpened" One Plan strategy in early 2014. Moving into the Sustainable Development Goal era, the government needs to learn from successes and challenges of striving towards MDG 4.

Methods: We expand previous work by presenting data for the full MDG period and sub-national results.