Emergency Roster of Consultants - Risk Communication and Community Engagement and Infodemics at World Health Organization

Purpose of consultancy

• The Consultant will work under the overall leadership of the HOTE pillar lead, direct supervision of the RCCE sub pillar lead, and coordination with other personnel at AFRO and WCOs. The Consultant will liaise between RCCE Technical Leads and country office (CO) staff to ensure communication, coordinate and organize meetings, and perform other knowledge management tasks necessary to move activities forward. The Consultant will also co-facilitate the regional training and special country training as needed.

Deliverables

The Consultant with support AFRO in the following key tasks:

• Establishing a strong/cohesive RCCE partner coordination at global, regional and country levels for a more effective response;
• Communicating science information/recommendations promptly that address critical risks and counter misinformation;
• Accelerating priority research and innovation in social sciences to support the implementation of public health measures and to ensure participation of at-risk and affected communities; and
• Enhancing country-level capacity to roll out effective and coordinated RCCE approaches through the identification of capacity needs.

Detailed Roles:

• Strengthen the capacity of national and local media and communications organizations to communicate accurately about COVID-19 and counter misinformation.
• Facilitate multi-sectoral engagement to mitigate the effects of socio-economic-political drivers of COVID-19 and contribute to the resilience of families and communities;
• Integrate RCCE into the design, implementation and monitoring for all COVID-19 response efforts to avoid duplication and gaps and to maximize the sharing of RCCE resources, standards, indicators, evidence and expertise;
• Establish mentoring systems to enable those at national and subnational levels to access technical support in an accessible and timely manner, helping improve the quality of RCCE approaches;
• Develop robust systems and processes around knowledge management and the documentation of approaches, lessons and best practices;
• Track trending questions by demographic/location/ language/gender/age etc. Map these against available content to respond to those questions, as a basis for gap and trend analysis, prioritization and monitoring;
• Develop strategies to prevent and address stigma and discrimination, overcome pandemic fatigue, and build and maintain trust;
• Coordinate efforts to manage the infodemic, build digital and health literacy and mitigate the impact.
• Balance digital engagement with safe and appropriately resourced in-person engagement to ensure that vulnerable groups and those who cannot access digital channels are not left behind;
• Invest in community ownership approaches, processes and systems to enable community-centred approaches to roll-out testing, treatments and vaccines;
• Provide formal and informal community health workforce and local actors with knowledge, engagement and interpersonal communication skills, supplies and tools;
• Strengthen the availability of relevant and accurate RCCE materials in a range of accessible and applicable formats and languages;
• Identify and strengthen the systems needed for sustainable long-term community engagement and empowerment, to support communities beyond COVID-19.
• Perform any other related incident-specific duties, as required by the functional supervisor.

Essential

Educational Qualifications

• University degree in degree in social sciences, behavioural sciences, development sciences, communications, humanities or related fields from an accredited/recognized institute.

Desirable:

• Master level in any of the above.
• Training in public health, health education, health communication, or health promotion is desirable.

Experience

Essential

• At least five years of related experience, at the national and international levels, in RCCE, working in disease outbreaks or health emergencies. Proven experience in the development and implementation of RCC's strategies and plans.

Desirable:

• Sound knowledge on program management, performance monitoring, and evaluation methods
• Proven experience in formulating and implementing complex communication strategies
• Experience managing and liaising with diverse stakeholders
• Practical knowledge and proven skills in emergency/disaster management concepts and tools and their applications, especially related to managing health emergency/disaster operations.
• Practical knowledge and proven skills in emergency/disaster management concepts and tools and their applications, especially related to managing health emergency/disaster operations.
• Experience working nationally and internationally with marginalized communities and children.
• The expertise of RCCE concepts and guidance; how to strengthen trust between and amongst communities understand how communities respond (who and what they listen to), create two-way dialogue, etc. Ability to contextualize and guide different populations and support the development and dissemination of relevant RCCE strategies.
• Experience in designing and/ or community engagement projects in development and/or humanitarian contexts- participatory approaches

Skills/Knowledge

• Demonstrated ability to design, manage and analyze complex information system projects, computer-based applications and databases, web-based tools
• High level of analytical skills.
• Knowledge of programme management and functioning of WHO and the UN system is an asset.

Closing Date

Oct 24, 2023