Sub-national health systems strengthening Individual contractor at UNICEF

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Title of Assignment

Sub-national health systems strengthening Individual contractor

Section

Health

Location

Remote if able to operate on GMT +3

Duration

7 months @ 12 working days per month (for a total of 84 days)

Start date

From: 15/05/2021

To: 15/12/2021

Background and Justification

This consultancy is sought to provide support to the Health section as it will be understaffed for the next six months.

Specifically the consultant will be tasked with providing technical and coordination support to sub-national health systems strengthening work in the Eastern and Southern Africa region, working closely with several country offices.

To Strengthen Sub-national Health Systems, Where Policies And Plans Are Operationalized, In Order To Improve Primary Health Care Performance, UNICEF Works To

UNICEF’s Health Systems Strengthening Approach supports actions that establish sustained improvements in the provision, utilization, quality and efficiency of health services, including both preventive and curative care, as well as the resilience of the system as a whole.
 

• Build health management team capacity on data use for planning and performance management including through the use of DHIS2 decision support apps;
• Improve linkages between planning and local government budgeting, while also addressing public financial management bottlenecks that hamstring the execution of operational plans,
• Support government coordination of partners active at the sub-national level to ensure that they are working within the framework of government priorities and plans,
• Define context appropriate general management capacity development strategies targeting health management teams,
• Assess and reduce enabling environment barriers to the performance of good management practices, including through strengthening accountability mechanisms.
• At the national-level, work with government to improve the enabling environment for these investments by working enhancing coordination around management capacity development investments and institutionalizing approaches to ensure sustainability.
   

Scope of Work

Goal: Under the supervision of the Regional Health Advisor in the Eastern and Southern Africa Office, the consultant will ensure the continuity of the work on sub-national health systems strengthening.

Specific Objectives And Activities Include

• Strategic Leadership and Management of 4-country initiative of District Health Systems Strengthening
• UNICEF ESARO is coordinating a 4-country initiative on sub-national health systems strengthening with a focus on improving sub-national health management, leadership and governance. This grant is currently in its third year and involves regional partnerships in addition to country-office led partnerships.
• Ensure communication and coordination with country offices, regional partners, donor and the U.S. Fund: The position liaises regularly with HSS focal points in 4 country offices (COs), with a regional technical partner on health management, with our donor (quarterly) and with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF on an as needed basis.
• Work with COs to prepare for virtual donor field visits in July and September to showcase the work and discuss next steps.
• Explore and work with COs to build out linkages between our evidence based planning methodology and public financial management systems and bottleneck reduction strategies at the sub-national level and incorporate into our approach.
• Work with regional partner and COs to improve quarterly performance monitoring processes at the sub-national level, by assessing processes in place, gaps and tools that can support improved action tracking and monitoring. Work to build CO and their partner capacity on tools.
• Coordinate and support evidence based planning refresher and next step trainings with CO implementing partners in advance of annual planning cycles. Anticipated timeline (to be confirmed with COs): Uganda – September; Tanzania – October.
• Provide technical input to a prospective formative evaluation of the initiative, managed by ESARO’s Evaluation Section. Support discussion and onboarding of annual recommendations across the initiative with COs. Agree on data collection priorities and approach in consultation with COs and Evaluation colleagues for 2021.
• Work to integrate findings and recommendations from political economy analyses studies of health management in 3 COs into grant implementation plans.
• Support UNICEF inputs to and project management of the development of an on-demand learning course of Evidence Based Planning and Performance Management with a regional partner and work with COs to identify use cases. The plan and much of the content for this course has been developed, but will require UNICEF input on products and technical hosting as well as working with the regional partner to keep work on track.
• In coordination with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF prepare and issue guidance to COs and regional partner for annual donor reporting.
• Support other relevant tasks that emerge with respect to this grant, including grant and fund management.
• Develop handover report summarizing accomplishments during the assignment period and highlighting emerging issues and areas for follow-up. Prepare digital folder of all relevant documents for hand-over.
   
• Supporting technical assistance on sub-national health systems strengthening and wider health systems strengthening initiatives in collaboration with other UNICEF team members.
   
• Provide support to COs working to enhance and scale their district health systems strengthening work, notably Mozambique and South Africa.
• Support the Regional Health Advisor with fundraising for additional work in sub-national health systems strengthening.
• Actively collaborate with other member of the health, HIV/AIDS, nutrition and other teams on the strategic positioning and technical assistance for health systems strengthening, as needed
• Support other relevant tasks pertaining to health systems strengthening that may emerge.

Work Relationships: The consultant will be expected to liaise closely with the UNICEF Regional Health Advisor, members of the UNICEF health systems strengthening/ maternal, newborn and child health team, HSS focal points in UNICEF country offices, regional technical partners, and other UNICEF colleagues. The consultant will report directly to the Regional Health Advisor.

Desired Competencies, Technical Background And Experience

• Work with Tanzania CO to design and execute a virtual donor field visit in late June/early July
• quarterly calls with COs to chart progress and challenges, noting where they are on executing implementation plans.
• quarterly progress updates for donor (slide deck) by collaborating with 4 Cos
• Provide technical inputs to the second round of data collection on the DHSSi Evaluation, working closely with the Evaluation section focal point and Regional Health Advisor
• Work with Tanzania CO to design and execute a virtual donor field visit in late June/early July
• Coordinate UNICEF inputs to the development of an on-demand course on evidence based planning. Ensure course development remains on schedule according to work plan. Circulate course with UNICEF COs in the region. Course should be complete and ready for use by the end of Aug 2021.r
• Work with 4 COs to define country specific approaches to improving linkages between evidence-based planning methodology and district budgeting as well as major public financial management bottlenecks.
• Develop memos for each country, which describe the current processes, state the problem, propose and describe a solution and how it will be implemented. Include any relevant tools or guidance which may be required.
• Work with regional partner and COs to improve quarterly performance monitoring processes at the sub-national level, by assessing processes in place, gaps and tools that can support improved action tracking and monitoring.
• Work to build CO and their partner capacity on tools. Develop memo that describes current processes, states gaps, proposes solutions and possible tools.
• Work with regional partner to develop plan for building CO capacity/ supporting COs to improve execution of quarterly reviews. quarterly calls with COs to chart progress and challenges, noting where they are on executing implementation plans.
• quarterly progress updates for donor (slide deck) by collaborating with 4 COs.
• Work with Uganda CO and regional technical partner to develop and execute refresher & next step trainings for CO implementing partners in evidence based planning. Highlight proposed actions that need to be improved on linkages to budgeting, partner coordination and quarterly monitoring.
• Work with either Kenya or Uganda COs to design and execute a virtual donor field visit in late September/early Oct
• Work with Tanzania CO and regional technical partner to develop and execute refresher & next step trainings for CO implementing partners in evidence based planning. Highlight proposed actions that need to be improved on linkages to budgeting, partner coordination and quarterly monitoring.
• guidance to COs and region partner on annual donor reporting by early-mid November.
• Orientation to relevant COs to UNICEF HSS resources and provide inputs/technical support to COs in the region or regional health team initiatives, as requested
• report summarizing work accomplished during the period of the assignment and flagging issues/follow-up items for hand-over to the staff member.
• all relevant files organized into a digital folder for handover. Review report with Regional Health Advisor and staff member.
• Orientation to relevant COs to UNICEF HSS resources and provide inputs/technical support to COs in the region or regional health team initiatives, as requested
• Education: Advanced university degree in public health, medicine, public policy, public sector management
• Knowledgeable about health systems in low and middle income countries and planning, monitoring and financial management processes in the health sector.
• Minimum 8 years of experience in management of public health programmes and/or systems strengthening initiatives.
• Competencies: works collaboratively with others; manages ambiguity and complexity; ability to analyse situations and propose solutions; project management
• Languages: Strong oral and written English language skills are required.

Administrative issues

The Regional Health Advisor will be the primary focal point and supervisor for this assignment. The consultant will be onboarded by the Regional Health Advisor and the staff member on parental leave. The consultant will be introduced to relevant CO and partner counterparts. The consultant will have at least monthly check-in meetings with the Regional Health Advisor and will be expected to have a handover online meeting at the end of the term of the assignment.

Conditions

UNICEF Regional Office is currently working remotely due to COVID-19. While this may change during the term of the assignment, it is expected that the consultant should be fully capable of working remotely for the full term of the assignment and has good facilities to support remote work, such as computer with good audio-visual capabilities for remote calls and strong internet connection etc. The consultant should be available to work during normal working hours (8am – 5pm) on the GMT+3 time zone.

As per UNICEF DFAM policy, payment is made against approved deliverables. No advance payment is allowed unless in exceptional circumstances against bank guarantee, subject to a maximum of 30 per cent of the total contract value in cases where advance purchases, for example for supplies or travel, may be necessary”.
The TOR must mention that “the candidate selected will be governed by and subject to UNICEF’s General Terms and Conditions for individual contracts.