Main description:

This volume's contributors evaluate the accomplishments, limits, and consequences of using quantitative metrics in global health. Whether analyzing maternal mortality rates, the relationships between political goals and metrics data, or the links between health outcomes and a program's fiscal support, the contributors question the ability of metrics to solve global health problems. They capture a moment when global health scholars and practitioners must evaluate the potential effectiveness and pitfalls of different metrics-even as they remain elusive and problematic.
Contributors. Vincanne Adams, Susan Erikson, Molly Hales, Pierre Minn, Adeola Oni-Orisan, Carolyn Smith-Morris, Marlee Tichenor, Lily Walkover, Claire L. Wendland

Contents:

Introduction / Vincanne Adams 1

1. Metrics of the Global Sovereign: Numbers and Stories in Global Health / Vincanne Adams 19

Part I. Getting Good Numbers

2. Estimating Death: A Close Reading of Maternal Mortality Metrics in Malawi / Claire L. Wendland 57

3. The Obligation ot Count: The Politics of Monitoring Maternal Mortality in Nigeria / Adeola Oni-Orisan 82

Part II. Metrics Politics

4. The Power of Data: Global Malaria Governance and the Senegalese Data Retention Strike / Marlee Tichenor 105

5. Native Sovereignty by the Numbers: The Metrics of Yup'ik Behavioral Health Programs / Molly Hales 125

Part III. Metrics Economics

6. Metrics and Market Logics of Global Health / Susan Erikson 147

7. When Good Works Count / Lily Walkover 163

Part IV. Storied Metrics

8. When Numbers and Stories Collide: Randomized Controlled Trials and the Search for Ethnographic Fidelity in the Veterans Administration / Carolyn Smith-Morris 181

9. The Tyranny of the Widget: An American Medical Aid Organization's Struggles with Quantification / Pierre Minn 203

Epilogue: What Counts in Good Global Health? / Vincanne Adams 225

References 231

Contributors 253

Index 255