Kagwiri, Mary2025-02-182025-02-182024-11https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/29613A Research Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Master of Public Health (Epidemiology and Disease Control) in the School of Health Sciences, Kenyatta University, November 2024 Supervisors: 1.George Otieno 2.Ramadhan MawenziHealth data are the relevant information routinely collected in health institutions by health workers. The health population needs can only be identified through data collection, collation and analysis as this provides information that should be used by the hospital management teams (HMT), in prioritizing resource allocation for service delivery, health work force, essential medicines, and governance. In most hospitals, these crucial managerial responsibilities seem to be lacking the support of data use for evidenced decisions, leading to poor service delivery and unnecessary referral of patients, yet the same hospitals, task their health workers with data collection and monthly submission of reports. In light of this, this cross-sectional study, assessed the utilization of routine health data for decision-making by HMTs of the selected level 4 hospitals in Nakuru County; Molo, Subukia, Olenguruone, and Naivasha sub-county hospital. This was achieved by determining the extent of use of the data collected for decision-making, examining data quality and identifying organizational factors influencing the utilization of routine health data in decision-making. The study population was 146 Hospital management team members, selected by use of the census sampling method. The study used three data collection tools; the questionnaire and the interview schedule. An observation checklist was used to identify the presence or absence of list of items representing quality data and evidence of data. A pre-test was conducted on a group of 15 hospital management team members (10% of the sample size) from the Langa-Langa sub-county hospital. A Cronbach reliability coefficient of 0.72 was achieved for each of the constructs and thus considered reliable. Analysis for Descriptive and inferential statistics was done by utilizing Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. The study found that Nakuru county had an average data utilization index of 62.9%, good use and that the accuracy of data collected, as well as the use of registers as a data collection tool were significantly associated with the use of Health data at a p-value of 0.025 and 0.043 respectively. The study recommended that the CHMT and HMT train, mentor, and empower health managers and all health workers on data management, data integration in policy development, standardize data collecting tools and data use through SOPs for all health facilities, develop a data quality assessment tool and provide support towards evidence-based interventionsenThesis