Quality in Prevention (QIP)

Comprehensive QI by external expert assessment

QIP is a comprehensive quality improvement tool for health promotion and prevention projects. It uses external experts to assess a detailed documentation form filled in by the project. The questionnaire can also be used as a guide for the self-assessment of projects, programs or strategies.

QIP has been quality-checked, tested in practice and adapted to the context of HIV prevention. It was developed in close partnership between the Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA) and the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) in Germany.

You can complete the documentation form by yourself or as part of a collective process of your choice. It uses 11 clusters of open and multiple-choice questions leading from “identifying the health problem” and “target group” via “objectives” and “process” to “results” and “sustainability”. You can also use existing project documentation and attach it to the form.

External Review

Once you submit the documentation form, trained external reviewers assess the quality of the project’s structures, processes and outcomes according to set criteria across 28 evidence-based quality dimensions.

The reviewers then assign a level of achievement between 0 (“Problem Zone”) and 3 (“Exceeds Standards”) to each dimension. They will also give concrete recommendations for improvement. Project data are treated confidentially and only the submitting project receives the assessment and recommendations.

Completing the documentation form will take from some hours to several working days, depending on how well you have documented your project already and to what extent you choose to involve stakeholders. The more detailed your documentation is, the better the assessing experts can tailor their recommendations for improvement.

You can expect the experts’ assessment within a few weeks. Then you will need some time to look at the results and recommendations and plan your next steps.

To submit your project for an external QIP review, please contact the IQ^hiv project consultants. To promote the new English version of QIP, IQ^hiv will provide the first 5 reviews free of charge. All we ask is that you answer a short feedback questionnaire in return. We will publish the fees for QIP reviews after this introductory offer has expired.