Request For Proposals: Africa Frontline First M&E Consultancy

Proposals should be submitted by email to Camille Phillips at [email protected] no later than Monday, August 15th, 2022.

Background

Africa Frontline First (AFF) is a collaborative initiative that supports the scaling and strengthening of integrated and sustainable community health delivery in Africa. The initiative is founded on the belief that a robust community health infrastructure is essential to the delivery of effective, efficient, and equitable care.

Through unique partnerships between governments, donors, implementers, and technical allies, the Africa Frontline First initiative will support 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to build high-functioning, resilient, country-led community health service delivery. These systems will include an expanded and institutionalized workforce of 200,000 community health workers across the 10 countries by 2030. Anchored within the local context and health reform journey of each participating country, these shifts in community health service delivery will contribute to:

• Reduce morbidity and mortality: Advance prevention, vaccination, testing, and treatment to reduce the impact of COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS; and support maternal and child health.
• Advance health security: Bolster integrated digital disease surveillance in the community health workforce to monitor, quickly detect, and respond to emergent infectious disease threats.
• Accelerate economic recovery: Build a compensated workforce of trained, supplied, digitally equipped, and supervised community health workers—especially women—who contribute to the formal economy.

The AFF initiative is led as a collaborative effort by the Financing Alliance for Health, Last Mile Health, the Community Health Acceleration Partnership, and the Community Health Impact Coalition under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Project Details

Last Mile Health seeks a short-term consultant for monitoring, evaluation, and learning to join our Africa Frontline First initiative to develop an M&E concept note. This will include (1) a revised theory of change, (2) monitoring, evaluation, and learning plan, (3) implementation plan, and (4) implementation assessment. The consultant will report to the Managing Director or Health Systems Strengthening.

This is a remote assignment with a duration of 3 months/ 90 days with a budget of $20,000.

Scope of work

Building on the work done already by the Africa Frontline First secretariat, the M&E Consultant will work on the following deliverables:

Deliverable 1: Theory of Change Review and Revision

A draft theory of change has been developed for the AFF initiative and substantially informed design of the AFF Catalytic Fund. The M&E Consultant will review the theory of change (ToC) alongside updated materials and information from AFF’s current design. The consultant will work with with relevant AFF internal and external stakeholders.

Output – Revised Theory of Change Diagram

Deadline – By week 3/ day 21

Remuneration- $2,500

Deliverable 2: AFF Monitoring and Evaluation Framework

As stated above, AFF is a multi-country initiative that seeks to strengthen and scale community health systems in up to 10 countries in Africa. Each country’s health system is unique, and the interventions implemented through AFF are likely to be different across countries. For example, some countries may strengthen health information systems while others revise training curricula and still others improve financing coordination. The profile and service packages of community health services will also differ by country.

AFF’s Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Plan seeks to balance the following needs:

• Accountability and transparency in the AFF interventions – at service delivery and health systems levels
• Demonstrable results
• Simplicity and Comprehension Focused on Decision-Making
• Reliance on and strengthening country systems
• Cross-country learning

With these principles in mind, the M&E Consultant will develop the MEL Plan for AFF. This will include, but not be limited to:

• Facilitate key stakeholder dialogue to identify priority uses of data, decision-making needs, and parameters such as info, time frame, format, logistical needs, etc.. This needs assessment can be an early interim output for this deliverable.
• Identify key indicators of success – including high-level outcome statements that translate strategic objectives into clear language of anticipated change
• Identify and quantify the targets to be reached by end of program – including intermediary milestones
• Develop a measurement plan including – what is being measured, from whom, how often
• Define which data will be used for monitoring and examples for how it will be used
• Define data and evidence that needs to be generated via evaluation or other non-routine systems.
• Define learning objectives, and prioritized list of research agenda
• AFF may adopt “results based financing” mechanisms in the future. With this in mind, develop the MEL Plan with the ability to adopt RBF mechanisms in the future.

Output – AFF Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan

Deadline – By week 8/ day 60

Remuneration- $10,000

Deliverable 3: Implementation Plan and Budget

Based on the above MEL framework, the M&E Consultant will also draft a high-level implementation plan and budget.

Output – High-level implementation plan and budget

Deadline – By week 10/ day 75

Remuneration- $2,500

Deliverable 4: Implementation Readiness Assessment

Based on the MEL framework and implementation plan, the M&E Consultant will assess the current capabilities of the AFF initiative’s resources. This implementation assessment will define the capabilities, resources, tools, partnerships, and other assets needed to implement the AFF MEL Plan including what is needed for.

• Data sources, data collection and analysis, tools that exist or needed – including human resources for data collection or reliance on administrative data. This should distinguish data available from routine health information systems vs. data that need to be generated as part of AFF programing
• information systems, and
• data visualization or dashboarding functions
• data management and quality control
• learning from and to AFF program teams and AFF cohort countries
• reporting of progress, challenges, and results
• which actors, partners are needed
• The readiness assessment can also consider newer / cutting edge techniques. E.g. the M&E potential of mobile-enabled CHWs, rapid / flexible / low-cost surveys, innovations around data quality control (e.g. machine learning for data quality control), etc.

Output – AFF MEL Plan Implementation Needs Assessment

Deadline – By week 12/ day 90

Remuneration- $5000

Requirements

An ideal candidate will bring:

• A degree in Public Health, Health Policy, Health Economics or other related fields
• Several years of professional experience in public health and/or international development, with at least 5 years leading MERL activities for health system strengthening, policy, health financing, and advocacy initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience in quantitative and qualitative MERL methods with a health systems lens.
• Demonstrates experience in MERL activities in low and middle-income countries with limited and challenging data environments
• Demonstrated experience applying equity principles to MERL activities.
• Experience developing MERL Plans for multi-country initiatives with country-specific MERL plans and cohort or aggregate country plans
• Demonstrated experience with stakeholder engagement and ability to collaborate with and provide technical support to internal teams and external partners, government counterparts.
• Facilitation of inclusive and culturally appropriate conversations with a range of stakeholders across geographies and cultural contexts.
• Deep knowledge of African health systems, health finance, health workforce, policy and advocacy.
• Ability to clearly communicate complex technical information to a wide variety of audiences and help persuade stakeholders to adapt policies/programs strategically as aligned with the evidence and appropriate for local context.

Application process

Proposals should include the following:

• Resume or Curriculum Vitae with relevant experience
• A sample of at least one of your work products in line with any of the deliverables above, preference for the M&E framework.
• Describe your approach to complete the tasks described above including a time-bound work plan

Proposals should be submitted by email to Camille Phillips at [email protected] no later than Monday, August 15th, 2022.

About Last Mile Health

Last Mile Health partners with governments to design, scale, strengthen, and sustain high-quality community health systems, which empower teams of community and frontline health workers to bring life-saving primary healthcare to the world’s most remote communities. LMH is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization with offices in Liberia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Malawi, Boston and New York. For more information, visit www.lastmilehealth.org.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at LMH. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.