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Focus and Objectives of OR Excerpted from Designing HIV/AIDS Intervention Studies: An Operations Research Handbook, Andrew Fisher and James Foreit, 2002, Washington, DC: Population Council. (More on OR Handbook) HIV/AIDS operations research focuses on the day-to-day activities or “operations” of HIV/AIDS programs. These operations are under the control of managers and administrators working in the public and private sectors. The operations consist of training, commodity logistics, voluntary counseling and testing, public information and education, hospital and clinic activities, orphan support, community- and home-based care for PLHA, institutional capacity building for NGOs, community mobilization, and many other operations that are part of HIV/AIDS prevention and mitigation programs. OR looks at problems affecting these service delivery operations, focusing on the search for solutions or, in the language of research, variables that can be manipulated through administrative action. HIV/AIDS operations research yields answers to perceived program problems. An important objective of OR is to provide managers, administrators, and policymakers with the information they need to improve or scale up existing delivery activities and to plan future ones. OR seeks practical solutions to problem situations and viable alternatives to unsatisfactory operating methods. It diagnoses and evaluates the problems that programs have and compares one service delivery approach against another in terms of impact, cost effectiveness, quality, and acceptability to clients. |
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