THET UK – Zimbabwe Health Partnerships

The Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) is developing a UK – Zimbabwe Health Partnership programme that aims to respond to key health workforce priorities in Zimbabwe. It will do so by supporting partnerships between Zimbabwe and UK health institutions.

Grants will be awarded to respond to national health workforce (HWF) priorities identified through a scoping assessment carried out by THET between February and April 2024. The overall objectives of the programme are to:

1. Strengthen the health workforce and the health systems in Zimbabwe.

2. Support the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) to strengthen human resources for health (HRH) in the context of mass outmigration of health care workers.

3. Maximise the impact of current UK – Zimbabwe health partnerships and attract new UK partners in to address critical issues.

THET will award up to 6 grants of between £50k – £70k, that feed into the country scoping priorities identified in the first phase.

THET will co-ordinate the selection, contracting, payments and reporting of all grant holders, with oversight including standardised processes, templates and tools from the UK Programmes team. The UK Research, Evidence and Learning (REL) team will provide REL tools and resources for grant holders and the programme team to use. These teams will ensure a standardised approach, tools and systems for the delivery in each country, adapted as necessary to the local context.

Complementing this grant management, the THET In-Country Consultant will provide advice to, and additional monitoring of, grant holders, ensuring they are implementing quality projects efficiently and effectively, and are collaborating with relevant national stakeholders. The THET Consultant will carry out activities for the programme from February 2024 until December 2025.

This document serves as a Terms of Reference for the type of work the THET Consultant should expect to carry out as part of this.

The activities expected of the consultant as part of this scheme will fall into the following workstreams:

1. Programme inception phase
2. National coordination
3. Health partnership engagement
4. Programme completion phase

THET does not expect the consultant to carry out all the activities listed below. Rather, THET will work with the consultant to identify from the below what should be prioritised within the time available in order to maximise the impact of the programme.

We are also interested in exploring the possibility to expand THET’s work in-country and would welcome the consultant’s identification of any appropriate opportunities. Where new projects are introduced in country, this could lead to opportunities to expand the role of the consultant.

Workstream 1: Programme inception phase

Objective: To support the set-up of the programme to ensure that the grants funded will contribute to the country’s health workforce priorities.

Activities:

• Support THET in carrying out a scoping assessment, including: identifying stakeholders; setting up and attending scoping meetings; and contributing to the scoping report.
• Lead National Stakeholder mapping and engagement – facilitating communication between the project team and key Zimbabwean health system representatives, particularly the MOHCC.
• Identify and recruit potential members of the National Oversight Mechanism (NOM). This body will consist of 3-4 national stakeholders with expertise in health workforce development, including MOHCC representation. They will provide an advisory function, to ensure national oversight and ownership of the design and delivery of the programme in each country, and to align with national policies and programmes;
• Disseminate information on the call for proposals to potential applicants;
• Support THET in the review of grant holder applications and coordinate the NOM’s review of applications.

Workstream 2: National Coordination

Objective: To ensure that project activity is in line with MOHCC, FCDO and WHO plans, to strengthen and expand stakeholder buy-in to improve the sustainable impact of the projects and to ensure the programme is accountable to national stakeholders.

Activities:

• Lead engagement with national stakeholders, including developing/ maintaining strong relationships with the MOHCC FCDO and representatives from other key health system bodies.
• Provide secretariat of the NOM, keeping them updated on project progress, and organising quarterly update meetings;
• Establish and promote key relationships between partnerships and national stakeholders;
• Map and prioritise stakeholder engagement based on how significant they are to the successful delivery of the project in their respective countries.
• Where appropriate, represent partners at meetings with key stakeholders, e.g. at relevant working groups/steering committees;
• Facilitate, where appropriate, partnership involvement in technical working groups;
• Contribute towards the logistics for organising a Zimbabwe stakeholder delegation visit to the UK
• Provide regular updates to THET UK on the above, as well as changes in health sector priorities, stakeholder relations, changes in the operating environment, media engagement opportunities and upcoming events.

Workstream 3: health partnership Engagement

Objective: To maximise the impact of health partnership activity. ensure learning, synergies and sustainability, and to avoid duplication.

Activities:

• Facilitate introductions, and strengthen relationships, between health partnerships and other relevant programmes and organisations, ensuring maximum learning, synergy and sustainability, and to minimise duplication.
• Advise grant holders on how activities can be scaled up, and support linkages with the MoHCC, appropriate regulatory bodies, other donors and programmes etc, ensuring that projects are embedded into the health system.
• Attend or present at health partnerships’ events and partnership’s introductory meeting with THET colleagues.
• Review quarterly grant holder reports.

Workstream 4: Programme Completion Phase

Objective: To close out the programme responsibly, contributing towards sustainability of impact.

Activities:

• Contribute to evaluation activities, including supporting data collection.
• Contribute towards the end of programme report
• Organise and chair an in-country programme final event between grant holders and national stakeholders.

Ongoing activities across the programme:

• Monthly project steering group meetings with THET
• Quarterly review meetings with the project team to analyse grant holder progress and risks
• Update individual workplan to reflect any key activities, meetings, events that are taking place
• Attend key stakeholder events/ meetings as appropriate to raise awareness of the programme, ensure coordination and alignment and identify key learning.
• Contribute to quarterly reporting to the donor.

Proposed time frame

Between 3-4 consulting days a month from February 2024 to December 2025. Please note there will be a degree of flexibility within this, with some months requiring more capacity, others much less. February to April 2024 in particular will need more capacity to support with the scoping assessment.

Contractual responsibilities

The contract is for 70 days for 20 months, which works out at between 3-4 days’ work a month. Consultants will receive a daily rate of £190, which totals to £13,300 for the whole programme. This is non-negotiable. The consultant will invoice THET on a monthly basis. Please note that there is a separate travel and communications budget available for the Consultant to claim from to help deliver the work; Consultants will not be expected to use their own funds to cover project-related costs.