Conservation lacks sufficient well-trained leaders who are empowered to catalyse positive change for the natural world. Addressing this need, the University of Cambridge launched a Masters in Conservation Leadership in 2010. The degree includes several features designed to enhance its impact. Firstly, it recruits international, gender-balanced cohorts of mid-career professionals, building leadership capacity in the Global South and providing a rich environment for peer learning. Secondly, teaching includes applied leadership training in topics such as fundraising, leading people and networking, as well as interdisciplinary academic topics. Thirdly, the degree is delivered through the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a partnership of international NGOs and networks, facilitating extensive practitioner-led and experiential learning. We present details of programme design and evaluate the impact of the Masters after 10 years, using data from course records, student and alumni perspectives, and interviews with key stakeholders. The course has broadly succeeded in its design and recruitment objectives. Self-assessed leadership capabilities, career responsibilities and the overall impact of alumni increased significantly 5 years after graduation. However, specific impacts of alumni in certain areas, such as on their professional colleagues, have been less clear. We conclude by outlining future plans for the Masters in light of growing demands on conservation leaders and the changing landscape of leadership capacity development. These include reforms to course structure and assessment, long-term support to the alumni network and developing a conservation leadership community of practice.

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is an essential component of public health emergency response. In the WHO African region (WHO AFRO), over 100 events are detected and responded to annually. Here we discuss the development of the M&E for COVID-19 that established a set of regional and country indicators for tracking the COVID-19 pandemic and response measures. An interdisciplinary task force used the 11 pillars of strategic preparedness and response to define a set of inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact indicators that were used to closely monitor and evaluate progress in the evolving COVID-19 response, with each pillar tailored to specific country needs. M&E data were submitted electronically and informed country profiles, detailed epidemiological reports, and situation reports. Further, 10 selected key performance indicators were tracked to monitor country progress through a bi-weekly progress scoring tool used to identify priority countries in need of additional support from WHO AFRO. Investment in M&E of health emergencies should be an integral part of efforts to strengthen national, regional and global capacities for early detection and response to threats to public health security. The development of an adaptable M&E framework for health emergencies must draw from the lessons learned throughout the COVID-19 response.

Agriculture provides many benefits to people, such as producing food and creating jobs in rural areas, but it can also have negative impacts on the environment. We analysed existing monitoring indicators for the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to evaluate whether the CAP is effectively achieving multiple social and environmental goals. We found that the current CAP monitoring system is unable to balance many potentially competing goals because its indicators are biased towards a few objectives. We suggest the European Union and its Member States adopt a broader set of indicators covering clear targets when the policy is reformed after 2020.

With the push towards control and elimination of soil-transmitted helminthiasis and schistosomiasis in low- and middle-income countries, there is a need to develop alternative diagnostic assays that complement the current in-country resources, preferably at a lower cost. Here, we describe a novel high-resolution melt (HRM) curve assay with six PCR primer pairs, designed to sub-regions of the nuclear ribosomal locus. Used within a single reaction and dye detection channel, they are able to discriminate Ancylostoma duodenale, Necator americanus, Strongyloides stercoralis, Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiuria and Schistosoma spp. by HRM curve analysis. Here we describe the primers and the results of a pilot assessment whereby the HRM assay was tested against a selection of archived fecal samples from Ghanaian children as characterized by Kato–Katz and real-time PCR analysis with species-specific TaqMan hydrolysis probes. The resulting sensitivity and specificity of the HRM was 80 and 98.6% respectively. We judge the assay to be appropriate in modestly equipped and resourced laboratories. This method provides a potentially cheaper alternative to the TaqMan method for laboratories in lower resource settings. However, the assay requires a more extensive assessment as the samples used were not representative of all target organisms.

Objectives: To review the history and goals of the US Department of Defense's largest civilian assistance program, the Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster and Civic Aid Program and to describe the number, geographic regions, years, key words, countries, and types of projects carried out under this program since 2001.

Methods: Using the program's central database, we reviewed all approved projects since 2001 and tabulated them by year, combatant command, country, and key word. We also reviewed the project descriptions of projects funded between January 1, 2006, and February 9, 2008, and examined how their activities varied by combatant command and year.

Results: Of the 5395 projects in the database, 2097 were funded. Projects took place in more than 90 countries, with Southern, Pacific, and Africa Command hosting the greatest number. The most common types of projects were school, health, disaster response, and water infrastructure construction, and disaster-response training. The “global war on terror” was the key word most frequently tagged to project descriptions. Project descriptions lacked stated goals as well as implementation and coordination strategies with potential partners, and did not report outcome or impact indicators.

Conclusion: The geographic reach of the program is vast and projects take place in a wide variety of public sectors. Yet their security and civilian assistance value remains unclear given the lack of stated project goals, implementation strategies, or measures of effectiveness. To facilitate transparency and policy discussion, we recommend project proposals include hypotheses as to how they will enhance US security, their relevance to the public sector they address, and outcome and impact indicators that can assess their value and effectiveness.

(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2010;4:66-73)

Schistosomiasis remains one of the most prevalent parasitic diseases in developing countries. After malaria, schistosomiasis is the most important tropical disease in terms of human morbidity with significant economic and public health consequences. Although schistosomiasis has recently attracted increased focus and funding for control, it has been estimated that less than 20% of the funding needed to control the disease in Africa is currently available. In this article the following issues are discussed: the rationale, development and objectives of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)-supported programmes; the management approaches followed to achieve implementation by each country; mapping, monitoring and evaluation activities with quantifiable impact of control programmes; monitoring for any potential drug resistance; and finally exit strategies within each country. The results have demonstrated that morbidity due to schistosomiasis has been reduced by the control programmes. While challenges remain, the case for the control of schistosomiasis has been strengthened by research by SCI teams and the principle that a national programme using ‘preventive chemotherapy’ can be successfully implemented in sub-Saharan Africa, whenever the resources are available. SCI and partners are now actively striving to raise further funds to expand the coverage of integrated control of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in sub-Saharan Africa.

The ability to measure and demonstrate the impact of conservation interventions is critical for management, accountability, and lesson-learning, yet most organizations struggle to implement appropriate, effective monitoring and evaluation. This is particularly so for community-based projects and livelihoods-focused interventions that require the use of social science methods unfamiliar to most conservation biologists. Quantitative surveys and indicator-based approaches are commonly used but are limited in their utility, and ignore a wealth of potentially valuable qualitative and anecdotal information on impact and change. Here we describe a method for standardizing the collection and analysis of stories of change that originated in, and is commonly employed by, the development sector. Trials of the use of the Most Significant Change method in a range of Fauna & Flora International's partnership projects revealed not only its value as a monitoring tool alongside more familiar surveys and quantitative data collection but also as a participatory management tool that improved staff capacity and project adaptive management and responsiveness. Although initially time-consuming to establish and implement, it has been embraced by these projects as a beneficial addition to monitoring and evaluation. The consequent interest it has raised amongst other conservation practitioners suggests that it warrants further testing and application. Conservationists would do well to learn from the tools and experiences of the development sector when exploring the social impacts of conservation projects.