Priority list of indicators for Girls' Menstrual Health and Hygiene: Technical guidance for national monitoring

As efforts to support MHH gain momentum globally, the lack of adequate validated indicators with related measures is a critical barrier to progress. At national level, the absence of standardized indicators and related measures limits understanding MHH circumstances across populations and over time.

A lack of standardized indicators curtails efforts to set and assess progress against targets that support MHH, unify approaches, and hold governments and service providers to account. To monitor the main domains of MHH, indicators and measures most needed are those aligned to key sectors, including Health [sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and psychosocial health], Education, Gender, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH).

To support countries to monitor progress on MHH for adolescent girls in and out of school, a global collaboration of MHH experts worked together with key stakeholders and leaders from four exemplar countries to develop a short list of priority indicators (the short list). These indicators monitor MHH across priority domains and are intended to enable comparability across countries and over time.

The purpose of this guidance note is to provide technical guidance on a recommended short list of indicators to monitor national progress towards supporting MHH among adolescent girls. The guidance note briefly describes the methods used to develop the short list and considerations for collecting data on MHH, focusing particularly on this population.  The rationale for each indicator, its usefulness and challenges in data collection, and guidance for measurement are presented along with details on data sources for each and evidence of their prior usage at the time of writing.

To support the uptake of these MHH indicators and measures, A training deck is available to guide how to use School level and Individual indicators.