1. Bringing Operations Research to Life:
Take Home Messages
Florence Nyangara, PhD. (MCHIP/ICF)
CORE Spring Meeting, May 2nd, 2012
Wilmington, DE

2. Key Message 1
OR is a practical tool that any organization
could use to answer programming questions
 Every program system has a possible OR problem and
solution waiting to be diagnosed/evaluated to inform:
Scale-up
Cost – effectiveness
Increased impact
Quality improvement or
Acceptability to clients

3. Key Message 2
OR studies must have strategic relevance to
local programming needs (foremost)
 Ultimate goal and impact of OR studies: is Use of
findings (not publishing) to inform practice, policy, etc
 e.g. CFI used the implementation process to develop a
simple cost-analysis technique
 Problems and proposed solutions must come from the
“doing” experience (not gaps in the literature, not
ground-breaking ideas or technological)

4. Key Message 3
OR studies require partnerships to achieve its
ultimate goal (Use of Results/process)
 OR requires collaboration between managers (sets
program goals) and researchers (help model the study)
 OR requires organizational support and interest
 Engagement of key stakeholders especially
government, and other local CBOs, etc

5. Let Us All Go Do OR!
THANK YOU!