Access to Medicines Evaluation
This 2011 evaluation assesses the effectiveness and the impact of ten years of Oxfam’s global work on access to medicines from 2001 to 2011. It seeks to draw lessons of relevance for Oxfam’s thinking about different campaign models.
The evaluation finds that long-term and low-intensity advocacy to influencing policy and development outcomes can be highly effective, especially when the issue is highly specialized. Persistence, technically sophisticated analysis and substantive proposals, and adept alignment with strategic allies characterized the Access to Medicines campaign over the ten years examined. A small team of staff working in different locations across the confederation have contributed to significant advances in access to medicines, particularly for HIV-AIDS. The evaluation finds that the access to medicines work achieved some notable policy successes despite minimal and uneven resourcing (after an initial early campaigning phase) when the focus did not align with Oxfam’s priority campaign focuses. It also concludes that a lack of coherent architecture within the campaign to ensure Southern voices are heard make it difficult to assess actual impacts, including differentiated impacts by gender, for example.
The evaluation was included in the overall review of Oxfam’s 2007-2012 Strategic Plan, Making Sense of Demanding Justice and contributed to the development of the current Oxfam Strategic Plan.