Individual Consultant – Human-Centered Design (HCD)

Background:

As part of its commitment to ensuring universal health coverage, Ethiopia aspires to provide the full spectrum of essential and equitable high-quality health services by strengthening the primary health care system (PHC). Providing evidence-based quality care equitably to women during pregnancy, and to women and their newborns during delivery and the postnatal period, is critical to averting maternal and newborn morbidities and mortalities. Both supply side and demand factors affect access to and utilization of evidence-based life-saving maternal and newborn health (MNH) interventions. Hence, developing impactful life-saving community-based packages of interventions with strong referral linkages with the local health systems has a greater potential for improving maternal and newborn outcomes.

This investment, which is being implemented through a partnership between Amref and JSI with local implementing partners, referred to community-based life-saving packages of interventions and delivery models in settings with chronic underutilization of facility-based MNH care are designed and delivered. This outcome intends to use implementation research (IR) to co-design, develop, test, and generate evidence to inform national strategies.

As such, this investment will introduce MNH intervention that will be delivered at the community level through design that is well informed by community perspectives including understanding the beliefs, aspirations and motivations of communities that will provide insights for the intervention design. Over the three years, the project will be running we will focus on a) developing a community-based life-saving package of interventions and delivery models, b) delivering a package of interventions for improved household MNH practices including the promotion of self-care, facility birth, and essential newborn care, and c) design participatory learning and action (PLA) approach to improve women’s agency, demand for, and use of the package of interventions in agrarian and pastoralist settings where there is persistently high home birth and chronic underutilization of life-saving MNH services.

As such, Amref Health Africa intends to hire an individual Human-center design consultant who will undertake capacity enhancement for the project staff, provide technical assistance to use HCD approach and techniques in the design and testing of community-based MNH interventions in settings with chronic underutilization of facility birth, and gender-barrier analysis for MNH services.

Scope of the Consultancy Work:

The HCD consultant will undertake capacity enhancement activities on HCD for the project staff. In addition, s/he will provide technical assistance in the application of an HCD approach and techniques to generate insights on the community needs and barriers on use of health facility birth and design community-based MNH interventions that meet their needs in settings with chronic underutilization of MNH services. Furthermore, the HCD consultant will provide technical assistance to use HCD approach and techniques for gender-barrier analysis. This activity will be conducted in five woredas of four regions, Afar (Chifra), Oromia (Seka Chekorsa), Somali (Degahbur and Gursum) and Sidam (Bensa) in Ethiopia and 2-3 primary health care units will be identified from each woreda.

Objectives:

This consultancy work sets out to achieve the following objectives:

• Undertake capacity enhancement such as hands-on training, mentoring, and coaching on HCD approach and techniques to the project staff
• Generate insights on community needs, beliefs, perceptions, motivations, gender roles, and barriers on use of community-based MNH services in a setting with chronic underutilization of facility birth  using HCD approach and techniques
• Co-create context-tailored community-based MNH prototypes and solutions for settings with chronic underutilization of facility birth informed by the insights
• Provide technical assistance to use HCD approach and techniques in gender-barrier analysis related to MNH services

Key Activities and Tasks:

The HCD consultant will undertake the following key activities and tasks to achieve the aforementioned objectives:

1.  Capacity enhancement: The consultant will undertake capacity enhancement activities such as hands-on training, mentoring and coaching for project staff in the application of HCD approach and techniques to solve key health problems and constraints.

2.  Insights generation: S/he will provide technical assistance to use HCD approach and techniques to generate insights and perspectives on the community needs, beliefs, perceptions, motivations, gender roles, and barriers on use of community-based MNH services in a setting with chronic underutilization of facility birth. Prelude to this, the consultant might carry out desk review of existing evidence, literature, national documents, etc. to explore and understand what the factors behind the utilization of facility birth are in way of facilitators and barriers and the behavioral and social drivers behind them.

3.  Co-create context-tailored community-based MNH prototypes and solutions: Informed by the insights on the uptake of community-based MNH services, the consultant will provide technical guidance to apply HCD mindsets, approach and techniques in the co-creation, testing, and iteration of context-tailored community-based MNH prototypes and solutions in a context with chronic underutilization of facility birth.

4.  Technical assistance to apply HCD approach and techniques in gender analysis: The HCD consultant will provide technical assistance to apply HCD approach and techniques throughout the process of gender barrier analysis for MNH services including study design and tool development, data collection, analysis, and programming.

Key deliverables:

The HCD consultant will provide technical guidance to enable Amref Health Africa to achieve the following key deliverables. Therefore, the gender consultant will be accountable to these deliverables.

• Project staff received hands-on training, mentorship and coaching in the application of HCD approach on their program design work
• A report on insights of community needs, barriers, and barriers into the uptake of community-based MNH services and possible intervention opportunities produced
• A report on context-tailored community-based MNH prototypes and solutions produced
• HCD approach and techniques applied in gender-barrier analysis and programming

Estimated number of days for HCD consultant to apply HCD approach to design and test community based MNCH interventions in settings where there is chronic under-utilization of facility birth:

Required Experience:

• Advanced degree in design management innovation, social science, and another related degree with HCD savvy
• Have at least 5 years of practical experience in the HCD space
• Working experience and a good understanding of the Ethiopian community health system and primary healthcare
• Experience in conducting HCD and anthropological study
• Previous experience in applying human-centered design techniques to design health interventions is an additional asset
• Experience in working in the gender space including gender analysis
• Published work HCD
• Ability to effectively coordinate with government, NGO, and local stakeholders’ essential
• Analytical and conceptual ability, demonstrated understanding of social research methods
• High-quality English report writing and strategy development.