International Individual Consultant to conduct Mid-Term Review of the Zimbabwe National Community Health Strategy 2020-2025 (Open to Non Zimbabwe Nationals Only)

Consultant Medical & Health Programme & Policy

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.

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UNICEF has been operating in Zimbabwe since 1982. We are a team of passionate professionals committed to the protection and fulfillment of children’s rights.

Supporting the Government’s vision of a prosperous and empowered upper-middle-income society, the country programme is aimed at contributing to sustainable socioeconomic development that provides all children, including adolescents, with opportunities to fulfil their potential, lead a healthy life, access quality learning and protection and meaningfully participate in society.

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How can you make a difference?

UNICEF Zimbabwe is seeking to engage an enthusiastic and committed Individual consultant to to conduct Mid-Term Review of the Zimbabwe National Community Health Strategy 2020-2025 (Open to Non Zimbabwe Nationals Only)

PURPOSE

The purpose of the mid-term review is to inform the MHCC and Partners on the progress of implementation of the National Community Health Strategy and provide guidance on the next steps in accelerating strategy implementation as part of contribution towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The MTR will provide an insight into what worked well, what did not work well, where why and under which circumstances. This will inform decisions for programmatic adjustments for strengthening the whole continuum of reproductive maternal new-born child adolescent health and nutrition including human security interventions. The MTR will also look at how the community based primary health care interventions have contributed towards strengthening the national health systems. Furthermore, it will contribute towards generating evidence and document lessons learned and provide feedback into the design of future community based primary health care programmes for better performance effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, and coherence.

BACKGROUND

Zimbabwe embraced the Primary Health Care (PHC) approach in 1980 and the country has a long history of involving communities as the greatest resource in addressing social, cultural, political, and economic determinants that underpin their health. Health Centre Committees (HCC’s) have been in place in Zimbabwe in line with the Public Health Act, and their membership includes representation from Village Development Committees (VIDCO), with which the HCC’s also work closely. The HCCs and VIDCO are the community development structures of the decentralized district governance framework in line with the country’s aspirations on devolution.

The Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) is now in the second year of implementing the National Development Strategy (NDS) 1 (2021-2025). The community level prevention and promotive health programs are national priorities for the health sector with the universal health coverage (UHC) goal aligned to Government of Zimbabwe’s (GoZ) Vision 2030. Strengthening the delivery of interventions for mothers and children at the community level is integral to primary health care (PHC) which lies on the continuum to achieve UHC. GoZ has initiated a whole of government approach to ensure that all departments have a common vision and are collectively accountable with a theme of leaving no one behind and leaving no area behind which resonates with the aspirations of the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC) National Health Strategy (NHS) 2022 to 2026 and National Community Health Strategy (NCHS) 2020-2025 to attain the highest possible level of health. However, majority of people still lack access to the services they need. Multi sectoral action and empowerment of communities are also lagging.

The community health programme has made achievements over the years. However, several challenges associated with all the building blocks for community health system strengthening persist. Particularly, inadequate institutional coordination and fragmentation of reporting structures has resulted in the multiplicity of community cadres with varying training and remuneration/ incentivization as well as an unstandardized package of services to be delivered at the community level. In addition, Community Health Workers (CHW) capacity building approaches are weak, as their training, supportive supervision, coaching, and mentorship are not routine nor sufficiently frequent. There are also frequent stock outs of basic commodities required for community health service delivery and non-functional equipment. Lastly, weak community health management information systems fall short of capitalizing on all the data collected at this level. All these challenges undermine the potential contribution of community health in accelerating progress towards Universal Health coverage (UHC) and the achievement of some of the related SDGs.

ASSIGNMENTS:

1. Preparatory phase

• Draft Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation Framework.
• Inception report to demonstrate understanding of the TOR.
• Inception meeting with MoHCC, UNICEF ZCO and NCHS Core Group Team.

2. Data collection phase

Desk Review: Review of publications, summary data of constituent programmes of the community health programme and Essential Health Package (EHP) of interventions, government and partner reports, and secondary data from related surveys and assessments.

3. Drafting, validation, and completion phase

• Finalisation of Mid Term Review report and summary
• Validation of the review report with MOHCC programmes, provinces, districts, communities, and key partners.

4. Dissemination and Advocacy

• Dissemination of the MTR report to MOHCC and Stakeholders.
• Submission of final report.

Major tasks and deliverables:

Tasks/Milestone:

Deliverables/Outputs:

Timeline, % invoice

Preparatory phase including drafting the Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation Framework, Inception report and Inception meetings with MoHCC, UNICEF ZCO and key partners

1. MLE Framework of the NCHS

Strategy.

2. Inception report.
3. Inception meeting report

7 Days, 16.7%

Conduct desk reviews, Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), facilitation during stakeholders’ consultative meetings and workshops (in person or virtual) including quantitative surveys

1. Desk Review Report
2. Stakeholders’ Consultative Report.
3. Summary of KIIs

21 Days, 50%

Facilitate the validation workshops and finalization of the Mid Term Review report

Presentation of preliminary findings to

MOHCC Programmes and Community

Health Technical Working Group

7 Days, 16.6%

Lead the dissemination of the MTR report to MOHCC and Stakeholders including submission of the final report

1. Presentation of the findings, conclusions, and recommendations at a workshop with key stakeholders.
2. Word documents, PowerPoint presentations in hard and soft copy).

7 Days, 16.7%

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

Education:

Advanced (Masters) degree in public health, health policy, health economics, health systems strengthening or a related field.

Experience:

• Relevant international experience in primary health care and health systems strengthening.
• At least 15 years of experience in the health/social sector.
• Demonstrated work experience with Ministries of Health and relevant government departments in Africa. Previous work with the UN is an added advantage.
• Strong track record of working with Communities and Community Health Systems in the African context.

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

• Ability to work quickly and effectively in a multi-cultural environment.
• Proven ability to work under pressure and under tight deadlines.
• Demonstrated ability to work across multiple stakeholders, including national, sub-national and community-level stakeholders and partners to secure buy-in and ownership.
• Excellent written, oral communication and /presentation skills
• A strong commitment to delivering timely and high-quality results.
• Proficient in MS Word, MS Excel and other statistical packages

Languages:

English

Further details of the assignment can be found in the attached Terms of Reference ToR Individual Consultant NCHS MTR .pdf

For every Child, you demonstrate…

If interested and available to undertake the individual consultancy, please submit your application online and attach the required documents including the technical proposal and an all-inclusive financial proposal incorporating an approximate number of travel days for field (local) travel.

Technical proposal: The Technical Proposal should articulate an understanding of the TOR and include the proposed Tasks/Milestones, Deliverables/Outputs, Timeline and level of effort by deliverable. The similar table provided in the TOR is indicative. Applicants may use the indicative table as a guide or deviate as per the proposed approach. The proposal should also cost-effectively propose the local travel proposed by the applicant to undertake the assignment.

Financial proposal: The Financial Proposal should include the costs (providing a daily rate as justification) for each task, including consultant fee, proposed travel costs and perdiem, communications costs and any other proposed cost.

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.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.

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Added 1 month ago - Updated 1 month ago - Source: unicef.org