Around the world, individuals, organizations, and governments regularly make decisions that influence the health and well-being of their communities. A wide variety of data are collected about populations, needs, services provided, and the resources needed to provide health services. For a variety of reasons, individuals, organizations, and governments often make decisions without adequate consideration of these relevant and available data and information. As a result, many health systems fail to fully link evidence to decisions and suffer from a decreased ability to respond to priority needs at all levels of the health system. This document presents concrete steps and illustrative examples that can be used to facilitate the use of information as a part of the decision-making processes guiding program design, management, and service provision in the health sector. Specifically, seven steps to information use outlined in this document will help address barriers to using routinely collected data by providing guidance in

• linking questions of interest to program managers and providers to existing data;
• analyzing, graphing, and interpreting data; and
• continuing to monitor key indicators to inform improvements.

These approaches can help encourage more strategic and effective use of routine health data and information in decision making, whether regular or one-time, simple or complex, minor or critical. The effectiveness of HIV/AIDS programs throughout the world is dependent on the ability of program managers and providers to identify needs in the communities they serve and to understand the extent to which their programs address these needs. Routine information systems can help. While there is a great deal of routine information collected at the health facility level, much of it is collated and sent elsewhere for reporting purposes. Too often program managers and providers do not have the capacity, time, or resources to analyze the data they collect to monitor service