Integrated Campaign Registry UNICEF
Integrated Campaign Registry

Ensuring every campaign builds on the last

Health campaigns are expensive but essential to reaching the hard‑to‑reach. The ICR makes sure campaign data is reused and validated compounding their value. Every campaign can build upon the last, across programmes, helping to make them cheaper and more effective over time.

Illustrative country
2022What the registry knows
20222023202420252026

Drag the slider. Each campaign round adds places, denominators, households, teams, and coverage to the same registry. Hover a district to see what is known about it.

Why campaigns

Campaigns are how health services reach everyone.

Funded

Governments and donors already pay to map places and reach people.

Repeat

Many run every year, in the same districts with the same teams.

Broad reach

They go where routine services do not.

Measure

They count people to set a target, then again to check it.

What the ICR is

The Integrated Campaign Registry (ICR) is an open data standard for storing and integrating data across health campaigns

The ICR is a standards‑based system of record for campaign data. It gives countries a structured way to store all their health campaign data in one place. Data from one campaign can then be reused to plan the next, and results can be compared across campaigns and programmes.

Technically, it consists of an HL7 FHIR Implementation Guide that defines a shared vocabulary and data model for campaigns, and an open‑source reference architecture for storing that data and connecting the platforms countries already use, such as ODK, DHIS2, and CommCare.

What the ICR unlocks

Key ICR benefits

Hand-drawn overview titled 'What the ICR unlocks': a living map at the centre, surrounded by six benefits: common places, better denominators, campaign visibility, skip the pre-census, effectiveness over time, and the campaign-to-routine bridge
Click the image to open the full-size original.
Common places
The ICR serves as a georegistry providing one common source of locations across tools. Stable place IDs and administrative boundaries, linked to health data in FHIR, load straight into field data collection tools such as ODK and DHIS2, so that what each round collects adds to a living map.
Hand-drawn diagram titled 'Common places': a living map of a district with stable place IDs feeds the same places and IDs into ODK on a phone and into a DHIS2 dashboard, and each round adds more back to the map through a FHIR store
Georegistry ↗ · ODK Locations ↗
Skip the pre‑census
Households, delivery units, and teams persist from one round to the next, so a campaign can target from last round's registers instead of enumerating everyone again.
Hand-drawn settlement map: six villages each labelled with the campaigns that have worked there, such as polio, measles, NTD, malaria, and vitamin A, the date they were last visited, and the households and people counted there, beside a clipboard listing all six ticked off for the next round under the note 'start from verified registers'
Microplan dashboard ↗
Better denominators
The ICR makes it easy to compare census, WorldPop, administrative, and last‑round figures side by side, so campaign teams choose their planning denominator with the alternatives in view.
Hand-drawn diagram titled 'Better denominators': the same six districts shaded twice, once by government census and once by WorldPop estimate, with a table comparing the two figures per district and the percentage difference between them
Campaign targeting ↗
Data compounds
Every round provides an opportunity to build upon and validate data captured in earlier rounds.
Hand-drawn table comparing what a campaign starts with at round 1, round 2, and round 5 across places, denominators, people and households, teams, and coverage, growing from a few place names tagged with one campaign and a single census figure to places with stable IDs shared across polio, measles, NTD, malaria, and vitamin A campaigns, several sourced denominators, household registers, team roles and histories, and routine and campaign coverage trends; below it four properties: resolution-agnostic, backfillable, sourced, and persistent
Campaign coverage ↗
Campaign visibility
Every campaign is a record with geography, dates, and status, so any programme can see what is planned where, from microplan to completion. When two campaigns are heading for the same wards within weeks of each other, the registry makes co‑delivery practical.
Campaign calendar: a timeline of campaign rounds by Nigerian state from February 2026 to January 2027, with coloured bars for polio, mass drug administration, measles-rubella, and integrated rounds
Campaign CalendarView dashboard ↗
Campaign‑to‑routine bridge
Campaigns share the same locations and underlying data that health systems need to deliver routine services. The ICR is built on the same HL7 FHIR data model used to represent routine care.
Illustrative settlement map in campaign view: a house‑to‑house sweep area and two temporary posts at the primary school and the church, over the same wards, facilities, and households as the routine view Illustrative settlement map in routine view: catchments around the health centre and the health post, over the same wards, facilities, and households as the campaign view
Technical overview

Key ICR Components

Hand-drawn diagram titled 'How the ICR is built': tools countries already use (ODK, DHIS2, CommCare, GIS) connect through integration and enrichment steps (connect, match, geocode, validate) to a country-owned FHIR store holding campaigns, places, households, teams, denominators, and results, which feeds planning, analytics, and reporting. Underneath, the shared contract: the FHIR Implementation Guide and shared terminology.

Open‑source reference solution

Integration tools

A suite of connectors that automates the exchange of ICR data with the platforms countries already use, including ODK, DHIS2, and CommCare.

Matching and enrichment

Tools that deduplicate people, households, and places across sources, attach population figures to places, and find coordinates for settlement names.

FHIR‑based system of record

The ICR provides a reference FHIR store that countries can run as their system of record, hosting and managing their campaign data in country.

Analytics and reporting

The registry keeps a historical record of every campaign, with services delivered measured against estimated populations. It serves as a data warehouse for analysis across campaigns and over time, and can feed results into tools like DHIS2 for partner reporting. See how the data warehouse and GIS are built

The shared contract

FHIR Implementation Guide

The ICR is based on a FHIR Implementation Guide. The IG uses FHIR profiles to adapt standard FHIR resources for campaigns: CarePlan for campaigns, Task for units of work, Location for places, and so on.

Shared terminology

Code systems and value sets cover campaign types, delivery strategies, missed reasons, team roles, and more, so forms and reports use the same codes everywhere. A form built on them in ODK, DHIS2, or CommCare feeds the registry without custom mapping, and results compare across programmes and countries. See how shared terminology works · ICR terminology ↗

Aligned with WHO SMART Guidelines

The ICR is built with the same toolchain as the WHO SMART Guidelines and is designed to be fully compatible with the Immunization guideline.

Global good

Developed by UNICEF with development partners, supported by the Gates Foundation, and released under an open licence.

Who benefits

Why the ICR matters to

Illustration for donors and global partners

Donors and global partners

The END Fund, the Gates Foundation, Gavi, the Global Fund, GPEI, UNICEF, WHO, and others.

They care about
Cost per person reached, comparability across countries, equity outcomes, and not funding the same enumeration multiple times.
Lead with
Skip the pre‑census · Effectiveness over time · Equity targeting · Validated aggregates
The story
A campaign digitization portfolio spans dozens of campaigns across many countries. Today each one stands alone. A strong result in one country says nothing about the next, and it is hard to see whether the portfolio is getting more effective over time. A shared registry gives donors and global partners comparable evidence of whether integration is working, and where.
Illustration for national programmes

National programmes

EPI managers, health information system leads, NMCP managers, NTD programme managers, planning directorates, and others.

They care about
Ownership, denominators they can defend, and real‑time data for decision‑making.
Lead with
Campaign visibility · Denominators you can defend · Campaign‑to‑routine bridge · Common places
The story
Campaign data is often siloed across programmes and tools, which makes it difficult to pull together into a common view. Even when the data is obviously useful, such as when two campaigns have worked in the same area, it is so hard to get hold of that it is often not reused. When every campaign feeds its data into the ICR, the next campaign can start from it.
Illustration for district planners

District planners

District health teams, campaign coordinators, microplanning workshops.

They care about
Time. Weeks spent cleaning location lists, re‑enumerating, and re‑assigning teams.
Lead with
Common places · Skip the pre‑census · Visibility of what is coming to the district
The story
The next round starts from the last one. The settlement list, the posts used, the teams and their areas, and last round's per‑settlement coverage are the first page of the new microplan instead of the output of a three‑week exercise. The hamlet found last time is already on the list.
Illustration for implementers

Implementers

Campaign contractors, civil society organisations, community health workers, health workers, NGOs, and others.

They care about
Not reconfiguring forms, location lists, and pipelines from scratch for every programme and every country.
Lead with
Common places · Common model · Validated aggregates
The story
A new country or programme often means adapting forms, location lists, and reporting setups almost from zero, even when the underlying campaign logic is similar. With a shared standard, that work shrinks. Implementers configure and deploy against something already proven instead of working out the basics again each time.
Illustration for technology partners

Technology partners

Developers and experts in campaign digitization, data collection, data warehouse, digital health, and GIS tools.

They care about
System efficiency, clean processes, and making sure development time goes into building something reusable.
Lead with
Common model · Common places · Reference solution, not platform
The story
Tools get replaced when governments change platforms or donors change priorities. A tool built to the shared standard stays connected regardless, because the standard stays the same when platforms change. Read the implementation guide ↗
Objections

Frequently Asked Questions

"Another standard nobody will adopt."
The ICR is based on the HL7 FHIR data standard which is the way most countries have decided to represent and store their national health data. The ICR is the first attempt to adapt the FHIR standard to represent campaigns.
"DHIS2 already does this."
DHIS2 does aggregate reporting and case tracking. It is not designed to be a standards based campaign model with places, teams, denominators, and protocols that carry across programmes. The ICR is designed to feed data into and out of DHIS2.
"This locks us into one vendor."
The ICR is an open standard and reference architecture that any country or tech provider can use. It is meant to compliment not replace existing platforms.
"Person‑level data in campaigns is a privacy risk."
The ICR data model can be uses to store aggregate (tally) level or individual data. The ICR provides mechanisms to control if and how individual level data can be shared between campaigns, partners, etc.
"We cannot compare across countries; contexts differ."
Adoption of the standard makes comparison between countries easier. Within‑country comparison across rounds, however, is the primary use.