The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is the specialized international health agency for the Americas. It works with countries throughout the region to improve and protect people's health. PAHO engages in technical cooperation with its member countries to fight communicable and noncommunicable diseases and their causes, to strengthen health systems, and to respond to emergencies and disasters.

PAHO is committed to ensuring that all people have access to the health care they need. Through its work, PAHO promotes and supports the right of everyone to good health. As a specialized health agency of the Inter-American System, also serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), the specialized health agency of the United Nations. From its Washington, D.C., headquarters, 27 country offices and three specialized centers in the region, PAHO promotes evidence - based decision-making to improve and promote health as a driver of sustainable development.

PAHO’s evaluation function aims to build a strong culture of evaluation at all levels of the Organization, contributing to improve performance, increase accountability for results, and promote organizational learning. 

Evaluation walks hand in hand with the PAHO Forward approach in its pursuit for effective management, governance, and organizational performance and to better equip the Organization to address the evolving public health challenges faced by its Member States.

In 2021, PAHO launched its new Evaluation Policy. The policy allows the publication of evaluations to help demonstrate the Organization’s transparency and accountability in alignment with the Organization's guidelines and the best international practices and standards. PAHO also developed, in 2022 an Evaluation Handbook to implement the Evaluation Policy and equip PAHO's evaluation practitioners with comprehensive guidance and good practices. ln September 2023, the Evaluation Handbook was also launched in Spanish to increased accessibility by a broader audience of Spanish-speaking users. ln 2023, other evaluation materials, such as reports, manuals, and briefs, were also translated into Spanish in a continuous efforts to resource PAHO staff with the necessary tools for the conduct, management and implementation of sound and impactful evaluations.

ln 2023, the human resources dedicated to evaluation in PAHO Headquarters have increased and it is now supported by an Evaluation and Research Specialist in addition to the continued support by consultants. The function also regularly runs internship programs and has already successfully integrated and trained four international interns. Considering the importance of the evaluation work in PAHO, and the growing participation in WHO evaluations, additional increases are expected for the following biennium.

Also, PAHO constantly updates and expands its rosters of evaluation firms and consultants, which now include about 80 providers. With this, PAHO has access to readily available resources to be deployed when needed for evaluations or for the procurement of external firms.

The first and flagship evaluation was in 2022 the Evaluation of PAHO’s Response to the Covid19 Pandemic, the first within WHO regions.

• Evaluation of PAHO’s Response to COVID-19 in the Americas | PAHO 
• Highlights from External Evaluation of PAHO’s Response to Covid 19

Also available in Spanish, as for all subsequent corporate evaluations.