The Quality Action policy kit

Facts and recommendations for advocates and policy advisers

This policy kit has been developed for public health officials and advocates involved in policy and programming for HIV prevention and related public health challenges.

The kit contains various documents that illustrate how to systematically integrate quality improvement into HIV prevention policies and programmes, and it offers justifications and concrete actions for integrating it into HIV prevention policies, strategies and action plans.

Download the Policy Kit here

Download the Core Package here

The Charter for Quality in HIV Prevention

Committing to key principles and criteria for improving quality

The Charter states the principles and criteria for quality in HIV prevention and calls on stakeholders to support and apply quality improvement. Not only must approaches, interventions and methods for HIV prevention be appropriate to the situation they address, they must be carried out at a high level of quality to maximise effectiveness.

You can download the Charter here

This Charter was created by the representatives of Quality Action. You can support it by becoming a signatory as an organisation or as an individual.

Sign the Charter here

Who’s who

Quality Action has trained more than 400 quality improvement trainers and facilitators from 25 different European countries. They form a network based on a culture of continuous improvement in HIV prevention, multidisciplinary collaboration and exchange of knowledge, skills, and expertise across organisations and countries. These experts can train others and provide technical assistance in a range of contexts. Find a key contact for each participating country by clicking on the map.

Tool selection guide

The Tool Selection Guide has been developed to support you in identifying the most suitable quality improvement tool or tools for your project or programme. The Guide first provides a brief, side by-side introduction to each of the five tools offered by Quality Action: Succeed, Shift, PIQA, PDQ and QIP. The following pages have more detailed information on each tool, listed in several categories. By comparing tools using the various categories, it is possible to identify the tool or tools most appropriate for each project or programme.

This algorithm is part of the tool selection guide and designed to guide you to the tool or tools most likely to offer you what you need. Download the full tool selection guide.

Glossary

Download the glossary here

Get Started

In principle, you can get started with quality improvement immediately by selecting a tool and applying it to one of your projects or programmes. In Quality Action we found that it is important to start small so that the first experience of using structured quality improvement is positive and that teams and stakeholders experience an immediate benefit from it. If your team and stakeholders are already motivated and you have a skilled facilitator, the materials provided with each of the tools offer enough guidance on how to use them.

However, we recommend introducing your team to structured quality improvement first, e.g. using the Quality Action presentation on concepts and methods of quality improvement and the Workshop Facilitation Guide. Depending on the existing skills and experience in your team, you may benefit from organising some training or technical assistance with one of the Quality Action trainers/facilitators available across Europe.

The experience of Quality Action has shown that there are six key factors that commonly influence the success of introducing structured quality improvement:

Tool Fit: selecting the most appropriate quality improvement tool, including making adaptations.

Planning and Preparation: planning structured quality improvement step by step, including preparation and follow-up as well as the actual meeting or workshop during which the tool is applied.

Participation and Involvement: selecting relevant stakeholders to take part and strategies to achieve their meaningful involvement.

Facilitation: keeping the quality improvement discussions focused as well as creative.

Available Resources: using what already exists within an organisational structure (such as meeting facilities, existing team meetings or planning cycles) to support the quality improvement process.

Additional Support: winning the personal support of line managers, funders and other relevant stakeholders as well as organising any additional resources that may be needed, such as finances for hiring a good meeting venue, reimbursing travel costs, paying an external facilitator and offering some refreshments.

Workshop Facilitation Manual

In 2014/2015, Quality Action provided training to participants from European countries in using quality improvement tools. Some of these participants then provided training to others working in HIV prevention in their countries. The Workshop Facilitation Manual aims to assist trainers in providing quality improvement workshops in their countries and organisations.

It includes a collection of plenary and small group activities that have been used successfully in previous Quality Action training workshops. They can be used in different combinations and adapted to suit different objectives and audiences.

The manual also contains sample training workshop schedules, which a number of countries have used to organise training on the tools in their countries. They may also be useful as a guide for training others within organisations.

Workshop Facilitation Manual (.pdf)