Sistemas Integrales is playing a key rôle in assessing the success of a multinational initiative designed to reduce inequalities of health in Central America. The Mesoamerica Health Initiative focuses particularly on reproductive, maternal and neonatal health among the poorest 20% of the population, and deploys a range of mechanisms including financial incentives. To evaluate the impact of these incentives, women and pre-school children will be surveyed in each of the countries involved - Belize, Chiapas, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama - on a rolling timetable from 2011 to 2015.

The health programmes are delivered differently in each country, which means that the questionnaires and data-entry programs have to be tailored for each of the eight surveys; furthermore, the study is structured so that one institution is responsible for sampling, questionnaire design and data evaluation, while another is in charge of all the field-work and data capture. Sistemas Integrales has been brought in to harmonise all these aspects and ensure the scientific rigour of the study.

The survey began in El Salvador, where it was realised that field-work will need to be organised differently in future, to allow more time for interviews in each cluster. Many women in Central America work away from home for one or two weeks at a time, and so the field-staff often found that the woman selected for interview was absent at the time of their visit. Sistemas Integrales will continue to make its expertise available to the survey implementers as the impact evaluation proceeds.

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