International Consultant: Nutrition Information Systems, Monitoring and Reporting in Lao PDR

Contract

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child,

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UNICEF in Vientiane, Lao PDR seeks UNICEF seeks to hire an international consultant with strong experience on nutrition information systems, monitoring and system design for nutrition. The duration of this assignment is 12 months, starting 01st July 2023 to 30 June 2024 in country and based at the UNICEF office, Vientiane, Lao PDR.

Summary of key functions/accountabilities:

The Consultant shall support various streams of work on nutrition information systems for the nutrition programme. This shall include the following:

1. Provision of technical support for strengthening administrative data collection and management in the health sector.

   • Direct support to responsible divisions and departments for the establishment of protocols and systems for the collection and management of quality nutrition data in alignment with global best practices and protocols.
   • Undertake capacity building of government staff and stakeholders on nutrition data collection,
   • analysis, interpretation, communication, and quality control for the management of Nutrition
   • Management Information System
   • Undertake technical support missions to provisions/districts to support the capacity building of sub national staff to use the nutrition modules, SOP and related tools for quality data collection and reporting.
   • Support the nutrition center with technical guidance and support for undertaking bi-annual nutrition surveillance. This includes support on data collection, cleaning, analysis and report writing.
   • Support the roll out of recommendations based on 2023 review of the NSS, including tools to strengthen their capacity to undertake nutrition surveillance in the future
   • Build capacity of government at the central and sub-national levels to monitor key nutrition programmes including IMAM, IYCF, micronutrient supplementation and more including the use of real time data collection tools.

   ii. Support the government and partners in strengthening quality assurance monitoring of salt iodization through innovation and standardization of practices

• Build capacity on the use of real time monitoring tool for monitoring by salt factories (quality assurance) and by inspectors (quality control) as well as the use of data for decision making using simplified dashboards

2. • Undertake capacity building of government staff, the Lao salt producers association on the collection of data pertaining to salt iodization as well as the analysis, interpretation, communication and quality control of such data for the improved management of the national salt iodization programme
   • Obtain data on levels of salt production (in MT) by factories and importation
3. Strengthen the monitoring of Breast Milk Substitutes at the central and sub national levels.
   • Facilitate the scale up of BMS monitoring in the country, tool development, and updating the dashboard of the findings for retail shop in the provinces and hospitals.
   • Build government’s capacity to analyse and use the data collected through the BMS monitoring for effective decision making
4. Review nutrition indicators on the Education and Sports Management Information System and facilitate the inclusion of relevant indicators
5. Other related tasks as agreed with the contract supervisor

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To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Qualifications or Specialized Knowledge/Experience Required:

• Maters or post- graduate degree in public health, nutrition, information management, international development or other clearly related disciplines
• At least 10 years professional work experience in related areas
• Proven knowledge of and experience in supporting countries develop and/or utilize information management systems
• Proven knowledge of and experience in working with DHIS2 and other databases/information management systems for monitoring nutrition results
• Experience in conducting nutrition surveys and data analysis
• Good analytical and report writing skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Fluency in English is required- both in oral and written communication.

Submission of applications:

Interested candidates are kindly requested to apply and upload the following documents to: http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/

• Letter of Interest (cover letter)
• CV or Resume
• Performance evaluation reports or references of similar consultancy assignments (if available)
• Financial proposal: All-inclusive lump-sum cost (Consultancy fee, medical insurance Travel costs – international and local)
• The deadline for applications is 14 June 2023

Assessment Criteria:

• For evaluation and selection method, the Cumulative Analysis Method (weight combined score method) shall be used for this recruitment:

  A) Technical Evaluation (maximum 100 points), weight 75 %

  Degree Education in ……… (20 points)

  • Masters or an advanced university degree in Public Health, Nutrition, Statistics, Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Mathematics and Social science

  Knowledge of ........... (20 points)

  • Demonstrated experience in managing, organizing, creating, analysing and archiving data sets from multiple sources and sectors.
  • Proven ability to write policy briefs, research papers, articles, technical reports and documents in English.
  • Demonstrated professional and interpersonal communications skills suited for donor clients, government and other stakeholders (including data visualization, report writing and presentations).
  • Track record of successful delivery of high-level expert advice to governments and international organizations;

  Experience in ......... (40 points)

  • Minimum of 8 years of experience in the management, analysis and reporting of biomedical data, ideally including data on human nutrition
  • Experience in providing technical assistance to government for sector development and capacity building
  • Ability to work in a multidisciplinary team and have the initiative to work independently to meet deadlines.
  • Experience in using statistical software and relevant analytical tools for both quantitative and qualitative analysis such as STATA, SPSS, R and ARC-GIS etc

  Quality of past work (e.g. understanding, methodology) (20 points)

  • Assessment of previous work including written and analytical skills
  • Reference checks

  B) Financial Proposal (100 points), weight 25%

  • The maximum number of points shall be allotted to the lowest Financial Proposal that is opened /evaluated and compared among those technical qualified candidates who have attained a minimum 70 points score in the technical evaluation. Other Financial Proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price.

  The Contract shall be awarded to candidate obtaining the highest combined technical and financial scores, subject to the satisfactory result of the verification interview.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.