Meet Jessica Shearer, senior technical officer on the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) team where she’s focusing on how PATH can better use data for decision-making.
Q: Much of your work focuses on what you call “network science.” How can understanding networks help PATH improve the lives of women and children?
Jessica Shearer is a senior technical officer, Monitoring and Evaluation team at PATH. Photo: Jessica Shearer.
A network is a set of nodes and the relationships between them. Nodes can be people, organizations, animals, computers. . .anything, really. The relationships between them can be almost anything as well: social, exchange, professional, sexual, and more. Social networks exist all around us as part of our social world, but more often they are created to serve a specific function (for example, PATH is a partner of the Joint Learning Network, which focuses on countries implementing universal health coverage).
In policy networks, nodes are individuals involved in policymaking, and relationships are whether they work together or exchange information or resources. We know that individuals’ behaviors and decisions are influenced by the people they interact directly with.
This idea has important implications for PATH’s work. For example, we can use network methods to identify which people are best positioned to quickly spread new ideas or information. Or we can analyze how facilities or providers are connected and look for ways to make those referral networks stronger.
Q: Tell us about your health policy research?
During my PhD work, I studied several health policies in Burkina Faso. I found that certain network structures were better than others at spreading and using new information and innovations.
In strong networks, many different types of organizations were represented (e.g., government, civil society, researchers), which helped ensure the entry of new ideas. Not everyone was connected, avoiding “group think” or other challenges that come when groups are too connected. And the networks were decentralized, so power was dispersed instead of controlled by one or few people.
Networks matter more than we may think. This is a compelling reason to think about the structure of committees, technical groups, partnerships, and supply chains that PATH supports.
At PATH, we use network science to analyze how facilities or providers are connected and look for ways to make those referral networks stronger. Photo: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.
Q: You’ve worked in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mali, and India. How has this influenced your approach to M&E?
Those experiences remind me to be context-sensitive in my work. Just because something works in Ghana, for example, doesn’t mean it will work in neighboring Burkina Faso. PATH is fortunate to have great people on the ground who know the context and who can adapt our department’s tools for their setting.
Jessica joined PATH in November 2014 as senior technical officer on the Monitoring and Evaluation team. This profile originally ran in Spotlight, PATH’s internal newsletter.