Country Profile - Sexual Reproductive Health Indicators

The work I have been working on with the Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) team is the country profile. It is a compilation of SRH data on the 20 Arab countries that the Arab States Regional Office (ASRO) of UNFPA oversees. When I first met with Shible, my supervisor, I told him I am interested in working with data and he gave me this responsibility.

Then, I researched indicators that would be relevant such as maternal mortality rate, fertility rate, adolescent fertility rate, and many others that I did not know existed. Whjile It was searching for data because I came across some interesting data such as suicidal rates and divorce rates and found some surprising facts! (haha, I got distracted!)

After collecting potential indicators, Shible, Afifi, and I sat together to discuss which indicators are most relevant to the office, which will use this tool for advocacy and communication in the future. While finalizing the list, I learned a lot of technical SRH terms that I had not known. I don't come from public health background, so Shible and Afifi filled me in with a lot of SRH information. For example, under "Unmet need for family planning", there are three different categories called "total", "spacing", and "limiting". Also, I searched "antenatal visits" but it was divided into two categories: " 1 visit" and "4 visits". Apparently, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that pregnant women have at least 4 antenatal care visits, but not all women have access, so they are not able to follow WHO's recommendation. 

After the final list was compiled, I collected all the data using databases from the World Bank, WHO, UN Statistics Division, UNICEF, and UNAIDS. I didn't know there was this much data available, but at the same time, I also realized there were a lot of data missing. Some countries have more data than the other and some indicators have more data than the others. Some countries did not have data at all. I am compiling data from 1990 to 2018 and it's hard to find data for every year. But, the World Bank's database has been really helpful because it has the most complete data compared to other databases. 

Once I collected all data, I had to populate everything in one Google sheet. I honestly took two courses on Excel at SIPA in my last semester. The first course was Excel Basics and the second one was the Advanced Excel class. All I remembered from the class was VLOOKUP! But I remember Andy, my former colleague from both UNFPA and SIPA telling me that he learned all the Excel functions and formula on the job. So, I did my Google search on Excel functions. After doing a lot of research, I was able to populate the data. I remember when I figured out that one formula that I needed to populate all the data, I was really happy and felt really smart! Then, I figured out a couple more formula I needed. 

The Country Profile was also presented at the recent meeting in Jordan where representatives from all UNFPA's Arab Country Offices gathered. I was connected on BlueJeans (a software like Skype but UN's version) from my Cairo office while my team was in Amman in Jordan. I got on the call for about 20 minutes to explain about the Country Profile I made and how it can be used to make graphs to analyze SRH data between countries and years. Shible came back this week from the meeting and told me that people were impressed by the Country Profile database I made! :D:D:D:D:D