Abt Associates seeks a qualified candidate to support the Local Health System Sustainability Project’s East Africa Activity (LHSS East Africa). The LHSS Project is USAID’s flagship initiative in integrated health systems strengthening, with a goal to help low- and middle- income countries transition to sustainable, self-financed health systems as a means to support universal health coverage. LHSS East Africa in particular will work in partnership with USAID Washington, the USAID Kenya and East Africa Mission (USAID/KEA), bilateral Missions in the region, regional intergovernmental organizations (RIGOs), national and local governments, private sector stakeholders, regional and local partners, and relevant civil society organizations (CSOs) to improve the health of vulnerable and mobile populations crossing borders in the region. The goal of the Activity is to contribute towards the increased access to and use of affordable and continuous quality health care in cross-border areas.

The period of performance of the Activity is from October 1, 2021 to June 30, 2023. The Activity will work at the RIGOs-level and six cross-border sites level over the two year period. The Activity will operate within three Kenya/Uganda cross-border health units (CBHUs) in its first year. The consultant is expected to operate with frequent travels to specifically the B usia, Kenya/Uganda cross-border site, dependent on local COVID-19 restrictions.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

The consultant will lead the execution of the following tasks:

• Conduct data collection and key informant interviews with local cross-border health authorities and stakeholders as needed to obtain information on current CBHU processes for routine data validation, utilization, and sharing, current capacity development needs within the CBHU, and current cross-border risk pooling and other financing schemes;
• Participate during analysis and synthetization of findings from data collection for inputs into a comprehensive landscape analysis report;
• Facilitate the contextualized design of Activity interventions per findings from the landscape analysis report;
• Participated during designing, tailoring, adaptation, and conducting of local capacity building trainings to strengthen the capacity of local networks and professional associations, and provide need-based, targeted support to identified private health facilities;

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, public health, health management, health information system, financing, IT, or medicine, is required
• Minimum of 4 years’ prior experience working in the public and/or private sectors
• Working experience and/or knowledge of cross-border health issues and/or, health information system, and/or financing sufficient to implement the Activity’s portfolio of interventions
• Experience in data collection to interpret and analyze results for decision making
• Experience in providing technical assistance and capacity building to local-level health stakeholders is preferred
• Ability to establish and maintain effective relationships with public, government officials, community leaders, colleagues, partners, and other key stakeholders
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision and as part of a team
• Fluent local language writing/speaking skills is required
• Fluency in writing and speaking in English is required
• Experience in rapid implementation and readily assessing gaps and current capabilities to provide technical assistance

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

The period of performance for the above work is January 1, 2022 to March 31, 2022, with a possibility of extension for the Activity two-year period.

ESTIMATED LEVEL OF EFFORT FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT

The anticipated level of effort for the duration of the period is 20 days. Abt reserves the right to increase or decrease the estimated LOE based on programmatic needs.