Health inequality monitoring foundations:  Reporting

The reporting step of health inequality monitoring involves developing and conveying clear, evidence-based messages about the state of inequality, and communicating these messages in ways that align with a defined purpose and audience. This course examines the components of high-quality health inequality reporting, emphasizing audience-centred, and technically rigorous approaches.

Photo credits: WHO / Xenia Finnerty

Self-paced
Language: English
Not disease specific

Course information

Overview: Effective reporting that is tailored to the appropriate audience can elevate the impact of health inequality monitoring. Reporting, as presented in this course, reflects conclusions derived from health inequality data analysis. In consideration of the analysis results, it begins by formulating a clear purpose and identifying the corresponding target audience. With these in mind, relevant technical content is defined, and appropriate tools are selected for its presentation.

This course provides an in-depth exploration of effective reporting practices for health inequality monitoring, including technical considerations for presenting disaggregated data and summary measures of inequality. The target audience for this course is monitoring and evaluation officers, though the course is suitable for anyone with a general interest in monitoring inequality or reporting health data.

This course is part of the Health Inequality Monitoring Foundations series, featuring the following courses: (1) Overview, (2) Data Sources, (3) Health Data Disaggregation, (4) Summary Measures of Health Inequality and (5) Reporting.

Course duration: Approximately 1.5 hours

Certificates: A Record of Achievement will be available to participants who score at least 80% of the total points available in the final assessment. Participants who receive a Record of Achievement can also download an Open Badge for this course. Click here to learn how.

What you'll learn

  • The purpose of reporting, and how it fits within the cycle of health inequality monitoring
  • Considerations for tailoring reporting practices to different target audiences, including the selection of technical content
  • Different methods of presenting data, and their applications and considerations
  • Best practices of reporting to enhance the impact and rigour of health inequality reports

Course contents

  • Introduction:

    This module describes the reporting step of health inequality monitoring, situates where reporting fits within the cycle of health inequality monitoring, provides examples of reporting outputs, and reviews the components of the course.
  • Module 1: Purpose and audience:

    This module covers overarching considerations for preparing health inequality reporting outputs, namely, defining the purpose and audience. We will further explore how these considerations can guide subsequent reporting decisions. By the end of the module, you will: discuss what it means for reporting to be purpose driven; identify an appropriate audience; anticipate the general characteristics of different audiences; and discuss how reporting outputs can be tailored to the audience.
  • Module 2: Scope and technical content:

    This module guides learners through decisions related to the scope of reporting and technical content. By the end of the module, you will: assess the results of health inequality analyses to determine the scope of reporting; describe considerations for reporting latest status, change over time and benchmarking; describe how technical components of reporting can be aligned to the defined purpose and audience; and discuss considerations for reporting disaggregated data and summary measures of health inequality.
  • Module 3: Data presentation approaches:

    This module describes approaches to presenting health inequality data, including text, tables, figures, maps and interactive visuals. By the end of the module, you will describe applications and considerations of using these data presentation approaches.
  • Module 4: Best practices:

    This module is a summary of best practices for health inequality reporting, providing learners with a checklist for creating high-quality reporting outputs. In this module, we will explore the question: what does the audience need to know to fully contextualize the results of health inequality analyses? By the end of the module, you will: discuss considerations for reporting background and methods information that is supplementary to the findings of the analysis; refer to a checklist to ensure that reporting outputs contain the necessary details to put results in context; and access examples of effective written reports.
  • Final assessment

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Learners enrolled: 2067

Certificate Requirements

  • Gain a Record of Achievement by earning at least 80% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments.