Duty station : Home Based

Duration:40 days  

Reporting to: Health Systems Specialist

As part of expansion of the primary health care; the government of Ethiopia launched the Health Extension Program (HEP) in 2003; a program that delivers package of basic health promotion, preventive and curative health services to households through assigning female and male health extension workers (HEWs)—frontline health care providers with 10th grade and one-year training. In average, two HEWs provide services at each kebele—lowest administrative unit with an average of 5000 populations. The principle of HEP is based on the principle of primary health care approach; improving health status of individuals and families through their full participation. The program intended to improve access to and quality of primary health care for communities through the transfer of health knowledge and skills to households. The health posts (HPs) were constructed with huge contributions of local communities. Overall, about 17,187 HPs constructed and 39,878 HEWs trained and deployed over the past fifteen years.

In order to sustain the gains, enhance the efforts of the HEP, improve its geographic penetration and furthering participation of individuals, families, and communities in PHC, the government of Ethiopia introduced the Women Development Army (WDA) strategy in 2011 where women are organized and mobilized in groups to share actionable messages and influence each other to improve their reproductive, maternal, new born and child health (RMNCH) and hygiene practices with little support from HEWs.

This national flagship program has played a significant role in terms of reaching the poor and delivering preventive, basic curative, and high-impact interventions to the Ethiopian population. It is also an ambitious government-led community health service delivery program designed to improve access to and utilization of preventive, wellness, and basic curative services. 

To fix the ongoing implementation challenges, the FMOH has conducted a program review of the HEP in 2018 with the objective of informing optimization of the program. This and the health sector transformation plan (HSTP) (2016—2020) midterm review conducted in 2018 revealed that despite the tremendous achievements, a lot remains in terms of forging strong community engagement in health. Over the last few years, the HEP has suffered from leadership and governance, human resources management, infrastructure, service update, finance and logistical challenges. Consequently, the FMOH, UNICEF and other development partners have been working closely together to optimize the HEP for the coming decade. The FMOH has prepared a strategic document which addresses issues such as: strengthening human resources through additional recruitment; enhancing the quality of training of HEWs; improving the standards for existing and new health posts; strengthening the overall infrastructure of the health system; and improving evidence-based decision making at all levels. In addition, with support of the BMGF, national level HEP assessment was done, and the result will be disseminated in the upcoming annual review meeting of the FMOH in October 2019.

In addition, operationalization of OHEP for both agrarian and pastoral settings will be continued as one of the top priority for UNICEF Ethiopia country office (ECO). Currently, the UNICEF ECO has deployed a national consultant in the FMOH and providing the required technical and financial support to shape the development of the OHEP roadmap and community engagement strategies.  In line with this, UNICEF supported the FMOH to develop Ethiopia’s Health Extension Program Optimization Roadmap towards achieving universal health coverage (UHC) (2020-2035). A policy brief for advancing community engagement to achieve UHC in Ethiopia. Now UNICEF is supporting the implementation of the OHEP Roadmap, by working with Ethiopia’s Regions to map out health post locations and work out whether they are in optimum locations and whether they are adequately staffed.

The purpose of this consultancy is to provide technical support to finalize the Implementation plans for the OHEP roadmap in line with the WHO guideline on health policy and system support to optimize community health worker programmes.

To achieve this purpose, UNICEF is soliciting the services of a consultant with experience in providing technical support in supporting the regions to develop maps of the locations of their primary health care facilities and staff so that primary health care planning can be meaningful and evidence based.

The successful consultant should offer the following range of skills and experience:

Good understanding of universal health coverage, primary health care, community health, community engagement, linking health systems and communities, knowledge of health in Ethiopia or other developing countries. 

Excellent oral and written communication and report & roadmap or strategies writing skills in English. Writing samples may be requested.

Good knowledge of the application of the equity lens and human rights perspectives to programming;

Good ability to support translation of analytical findings and evidence into a cohesive narrative.

Excellent ability to collect, treat and analysis data. Advanced computer literacy expected in Word, Excel and Power Point.

Advanced University Degree in development and/or social sciences, public health or related technical field is required.

The consultant will work under the direct supervision of the Health Systems Specialist and in close collaboration with the Cluster Leads and Health Specialist and Officers in Addis Ababa and the Regions. 

Professional Competencies

Integrity 

 

All intellectual property rights in the work to be performed under this agreement shall be vested in the (GOE and UNICEF), including without limitations, the right to use, publish, translate, sell or distribute, privately or publicly, any item or part thereof. The GOE and UNICEF hereby grants to the Recipient Organization a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use, publish, translate and distribute, privately or publicly, any item or part of the work to be performed under this agreement for non-commercial purposes. neither the recipient organization nor its personnel shall communicate to any other person or entity any confidential information made known to it by GOE and UNICEF in the course of the performance of its obligations under the terms of this agreement nor shall it use this information to private or company advantage. This provision shall survive the expiration or termination of this Agreement.

The core reports will be issued by the steering committee for the research noting in the acknowledgements sections institutions and persons who have made major contributions to their authorship. Further analysis of data collected in the evaluation will first appear as (enter name of reports the research steering committee will issue). Once the official report is cleared consultants will be free to work further on those papers for publication in peer reviewed journals upon approval by GOE and UNICEF. Consultants will provide the steering committee members with raw data, corrected/verified data once cleaned and programming files that permit replication of results from core evaluation reports.