Patel, Mahesh

(b. 1951, New York City). Ph.D. Public Health, M.A. Economics, University of Manchester, U.K.; Postgraduate Certificate in Education, University of Leicester, U.K.; B.A. Honors Economics, University of Sussex, U.K.

Patel is Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for UNICEF.

His contributions to the field of evaluation include a framework for evaluation of the implementation of International Human Rights Conventions, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child; adaptation of the Program Evaluation Standards to make them suitable for use in developing countries; support to the systematic usage of the Program Evaluation Standards [Page 299]in evaluation of joint government and international development agency programs; and the promotion of publication by evaluators from developing countries, especially in the Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning. He has been instrumental in the creation of national evaluation associations in Africa (16 to date); a continental African association; and organization of the first two African Evaluation Association conferences, with international agency and donor funding. He participated in the initiative to create the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE). Influences to his work have been Amartya Sen in the areas of development, economics, social choice and human rights; Socrates Litsios in primary health care and planning for the “Health for All by the Year 2000” initiative; John Hey in economic and mathematical modeling, especially in the fields of prevention and microeconomics; and Urban Jonsson in human rights theory and programming and community-based development.

He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning, for which he has been involved in the production of two special issues, “Interesting UNICEF Program Evaluations” and “UNICEF and UNAIDS evaluations of HIV/AIDS programs in Africa.” He has also published poetry and financed a large part of his academic studies by teaching Tai Chi Ch'uan.