Consultant - Community Protection/Risk Communication and Community Engagement - Band Level B at World Health Organization

Purpose of consultancy

• The aim of the consultancy is to support Member States, in particular PIP priority countries to effectively implement Community Protection Activities during 2024. The consultant will support the above designated countries to strengthen community engagement, knowledge translation and infodemic management capacities for influenza preparedness and response.

Background

• The mission of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme (The Programme) is to build the capacity of Member States to manage health emergencies and, when national capacities are overwhelmed, to lead and coordinate the international health response to contain outbreaks and to provide effective relief and recovery to affected populations. The EPR Cluster is responsible for identifying gaps and strengthening national capacities in preparedness and response to respond effectively to emergencies while ensuring resilience of health systems during these emergencies.

Deliverables
The Incumbent Will Deliver The Following

• RCCE systems in pandemic preparedness strengthened
• All hazard pandemic preparedness plan must include RCCE component that addresses pandemic influenza and other respiratory pathogens of pandemic potential.
• A series of multisectoral partnership meetings held to review and update RCCE coordination plans and SOPS for emergencies at national and regional levels.
• Workshop to update RCCE plan based on influenza plan (update the RCCE plan based on the PIP for 35 regional and central focal persons based on epidemic profiling)

Community Engaged

• Guidelines and SOPs for community engagement developed (a systematic engagement of communities for emergencies to enhance risk perception and informed decision making for risk mitigation enabled by the availability of community engagement SOP and guidelines).
• Multisectoral risk communication and community engagement team supported to develop SOP and guidelines.

Knowledge translation capacity is developed and enhanced

• To address gaps in research findings translation, a series of training workshops held for selected researchers, health staff and media to equip them with skills to translate research findings to inform policy makers on influenza and pandemic preparedness policy and planning as well as awareness creation for the public.
• Training to enhance knowledge translation capacities of the Ministry of health and other stakeholders critical for pandemic preparedness to inform evidence-informed policies, strategies, plans, tools, and communication messages.
• Conducted annual pre-season knowledge translation to review and update seasonal and pandemic respiratory pathogens preparedness and response plans, strategies, tools, and messages for effective community engagement or seasonal and pandemic respiratory pathogens prevention and response.
• Regularly review and update preseason messages and print IEC materials for seasonal and pandemic respiratory pathogens preparedness and response.

Effective infodemic management systems in place

• Strengthened capacities for Ministers of Health for Infodemic management in acute respiratory pathogen events (especially use of social media to combat infodemics.)
• Developed an infodemic management guide, and
• Trained the RCCE teams (MoHs and stakeholders) at central and regional on the use of infodemic tool and on infodemic management for seasonal and Pandemic respiratory pathogens preparedness and response.

Coordination

• Conduct monthly/regular meetings with countries teams for activities follow up, monitoring, evaluation and sharing experience;
• Attend strategic/High level meetings to showcase the progress made by the program and spread impact.
• Report keys recommendations, challenges, and gaps to the supervisor.
• Support reporting to the donor.

Documentation

• Gather the lessons learned, best practices and ensure their progressive appropriation and use to improve RCCE.
• Put in place strong documentation/data mining to support ongoing and or further analysis to guide decision making.

He/she will additionally support the implementation of the overall community protection agenda of the Nairobi Hub of Emergencies:

• Support countries to implement the community protection regional strategy.
• Support the Hub to manage the partnership on RCCE.
• Support implementation of RCCE component into the hub’ programs

Key Deliverables

• 9 reports of the monthly coordination meetings with countries (that include follow-up of implementation of action points).
• Report of implementation of each country community protection PIP/RCCE workplan.
• Documentation of each country experience (lessons learned, best practices, etc.).
• A database of RCCE best practices, lessons learned and examples ready for use for analysis.
• Reports to the donors.
• Reports on support provided to the RCCE Nairobi hub.

Educational Qualifications
Qualifications, experience, skills and languages
Essential

• A first university degree in communication, social sciences or public health.

Experience
Essential

• At least 5 years’ experience of risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) with international experience.

Desirable

• Experience of working in risk communications or health promotion/community engagement during public health emergencies
• Experience of RCCE capacity building at the country and regional levels

Skills/Knowledge

• Good writing skills
• Good understanding of digital media and/or experience of community engagement and feedback mechanisms.

Languages and level required

• Expert knowledge of English or French with working level of the other language.

Closing Date: Mar 19, 2024