Write your Paper based on Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Data on Sexual, Reproductive and Child Health

COURSES AND POGRAMMES CAN BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Why take this course?

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), secondary population-level and health service data, such as Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), facility-based surveys (Service Provision Assessment, SARA) and routine health system data (DHIS2/SNIS), are a rich and important source of data. Yet, they remain underused by researchers and policy-makers. 

This course is designed to bridge this gap. It aims to strengthen capacity of researchers working in LMIC to conduct quantitative analysis on such data and thereby answer questions that are relevant to particular countries and settings.

What will you learn?

This course supports researchers in analyzing secondary data, focusing on sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. As a course participant, you will be:

• expected to develop and pursue a key research question answerable with relevant data,
• conduct data analysis under the guidance of the course coaches, and
•  develop an advanced draft of a publishable research paper.

For the 2026 edition, we have expanded the focus to include not just DHS data, but also other high-quality secondary data sources, such as publicly available surveys of populations and health facilities (DHS, MICS, PMA, SARA, SPA etc), routine data (DHIS2), or other high-quality datasets collected by research studies, provided you have the necessary permissions to access and analyse them.

Who should apply?

This course is primarily (but not exclusively) aimed at:

• junior to mid-level health researchers from LMICs,
• Masters-level graduates and PhD students interested in understanding and using secondary data.

Participants must have:

• a good command of a statistical software package (STATA, R and SPSS),
• a working knowledge in the statistical methods they are planning to use (e.g., logistic regression), and
• a basic knowledge of spatial data analysis (for the extended track).

Course format

The course is organised by Dr Lenka Benova and Dr Peter Macharia. Each participant will be assigned a coach with expertise in secondary data analysis and relevant field of sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. The coaches provide tailored support during the online phase. Some coaches will also be available during the face-to-face week. A maximum of two course participants will be assigned to each coach.

During the course, you will be able to discuss analysis strategies and statistical approaches with the ITM statistician if needed.

Two tracks for the face-to-face component (for the 2026 edition):

• One-week track: for participants who are conducting standard statistical analyses
• Three-week track: for participants who will incorporate advanced geospatial analysis in their approach and who require longer support to conduct their analysis.