Members, based around the U.S., and some abroad, regularly participate in informational webinars on a variety of subjects, that have included broad themes such as the overall performance of PQMD members/partners in responding to the Haiti earthquake and lessons learned.

Members, both PQMD and otherwise, of the broader global health community, are also encourage to participate in the PQMD Community of Practice, and online space for webinars, continued dialogue, and sharing of ideas & best-practices.

Each year, PQMD hosts a global health policy or educational forum on topics relevant to PQMD members and others engaged in medical product donation and placement or other related fields. Past themes have included:

• Unintended Consequences of Donations
• Sacrificing the good for the perfect:  What does GOOD look like when measuring the impact of donations?
• Moving from Traditional Philanthropy to Creating Shared Value
• Making the Case for Medical Product Donations
• Improving Global Health and Building Resilient Communities Through Partnerships
• Meeting Domestic & Global Health Needs In Uncertain Times

Case Studies from the 2016 and 2015 Forums

Members of PQMD are very interested in measuring real progress, whether it be industry wide or member/partner based, in applying their lessons learned, meeting high-quality standards, or achieving stated project aims. Numeric indications of their achievements help members to engage in continuous improvement in their work with PQMD, their collaborations with each other, and in their interactions with outside parties. Periodically, PQMD and its members will partner with a third party to assist in implementing metric studies to inform programming in PQMD and in their own organizations.

In 2015, PQMD began working with the University of Washington to assess the current metric mechanisms that members use to evaluate their donations programs. With work still in progress, the results of this study will be used to make adjustments to organizational mechanisms and possibly allow for the development of a common member mechanism for calculating PQMD aggregate impact in the area of donations of medical products and services, and evaluate the alliance’s progress toward achieving its mission. A summary of the lessons learned from this study will be available at its completion.

Previously, PQMD has conducted research on developing metrics to evaluate impact of donation programs, initiated studies to better understand issues, practices, and trends in quality product donations and improve access to healthcare, and fostered multi-sectorial partnerships to explore such topics as donations in Africa, the Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

Four of the eight standing PQMD board committees: Program Services, Disaster Response, Standards & Guidance, and Data & Metrics are oriented toward sharing information and experience; gathering new information on changes in the field, trends, & progress in improving health; building on existing knowledge, and collaborating to improve cooperative activities and programming. As committees achieve major learnings or reach new programming or standards milestones, this knowledge is shared and discussed with the board as a whole.

PQMD maintains a reservoir of resources related to the fields of health, health product donation, emergency response, humanitarian assistance, health system strengthening, partnership, member activities in the field and other topics related to PQMD’s work. Much of this information or links to the related information can be found by clicking here.