Training and Development Specialist at John Snow Inc - JSI

Background
The Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) is a global U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cooperative agreement to introduce and support high-impact health interventions in 25 priority countries, including Nigeria, with the ultimate goal of ending preventable maternal and child deaths (EPMCD) within a generation. MCSP engages governments, policy makers, private sector leaders, health care providers, civil society, faith-based organizations and communities in adopting and accelerating proven approaches to address the major causes of maternal, newborn and child mortality and improve the quality of health services from household to hospital.

MCSP supports programming in maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), immunization, family planning and reproductive health, nutrition, health systems strengthening, water/sanitation/hygiene, malaria, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and pediatric HIV care and treatment. Health systems strengthening, household and community mobilization, gender integration and eHealth are also cross-cutting themes and areas of the program’s work.

In Nigeria, the MCSP MNCH program has been tasked with catalyzing central-level policy changes needed to accelerate declines in preventable childhood deaths. This includes ensuring increased access to treatment for childhood pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria, especially at the community level. MCSP is also supporting states to improve access to high-quality preventive and curative MNCH services, including through the increased availability of essential commodities at both the facility and community levels. The MCSP’s program goal for child health is to increase access to quality treatment for childhood illness at both the community and facility levels, by improving the national policy environment for the scale-up of integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) and promoting state leadership and investments in child health.

Consultancy Overview
In spite of several Nigeria national policies such as the National Child Health Policy; National Malaria Policy; and Integrated Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Strategy, over 700,000 under-five deaths were estimated to have occurred in 2015 in Nigeria. Most of these under-five die at home with no contact with formal health system. The adoption of the iCCM strategy provides timely treatment for common childhood illness at community level, especially for the most vulnerable children in hard-to-reach communities. Supporting iCCM helps ensure that sick children have access to life-saving promotive, preventive, and curative interventions at the community.

At the state level, MCSP is currently supporting the SMOH in providing high quality child health services in 12 selected LGAs in Kogi and Ebonyi states through facility based integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI) and by implementing the iCCM intervention in 4 selected LGAs (2 per state) at the community level which will be achieved by working with relevant partners and stakeholders to strengthen the capacity of community resource persons such as patent proprietary medicines vendors to provide quality iCCM services. Acknowledging that the consistent availability of four pharmaceutical products (amoxicillin dispersible tablets, low osm. ORS/Zinc, ACTs and rapid diagnostic test kits) is crucial to the successful implementation of child health services at health facility and community levels; it becomes imperative that service providers and community resource persons are able to manage the inventory of these essential medicines so that they are available whenever a sick child needs them. Job aids will underscore relevant aspects of the training on inventory management and storage practices for easy reference and implementation.

In addition to MCSP’s development of and inventory management Guide for Proprietary and Patent Medicine Vendors in 2017,many programs in Nigeria have developed detailed inventory management manuals including the now defunct SURE-P program (2013) and the National Malaria Control Program (2010). In addition, specific guidance for Central and Health Facility level management of RDTs was developed and published in 2009 by WHO and the USAID | DELIVER PROJECT. These and other more recent documents as available can serve as technical references for the development of job aids on inventory management and on storage of pharmaceuticals.

Based on the above, MCSP Child Health requires the services of a training and development specialist with experience in developing content for public health supply chain related courses according to national guidelines. The consultant will develop user-friendly job aids on inventory management and storage best practices targeted to support health commodity managers at different levels, specifically patent medicines vendors, service providers and warehouse managers, designed to support their performance of basic logistics functions that relate to commodity security of essential medicines for childhood illnesses.

Specific Tasks

• Task 1: Develop job aids as flip charts on Inventory Management for priority MNCH medicines. These Job aids should be tailored for use by service providers and patent medicines vendors
• Task 2: Develop job aids such as posters for best storage practices. These Job aids should be tailored for use by warehouse managers at state central medical stores and health facilities. Two sets of job aids may be required to reflect different priorities at these two distribution tiers.
• Task 3: Submit sample job aids on Inventory Management to MCSP CH team for review and approval
• Task 4: Submit sample job aids on Best Storage Practices to MCSP CH team for review and approval

Deliverable:

• Sample Job Aids on Inventory Management for iCCM and IMCI (flipchart) Sample Job Aids on Best Storage Practices (A2, thick card poster)

Qualifications& Experience

• The Training and Development Specialist should be currently active in supporting capacity building on supply chain functions for public health interventions.
• The Training and Development Specialist should be very familiar with training toolkits for Integrated Community Case Management and Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses
• S/he must be experienced in developing content for training on inventory management and storage best practices.
• Demonstrate excellent communication skills for a variety of target participants
• Must possess excellent presentation skills.

Duration

• An addendum on inventory management was designed as a component of the iCCM training for community resource persons, while the capacity of health facility staff was also built to enable them to manage essential medicines for childhood illnesses at service delivery points.
• The principles of inventory management remain the same but the job aids should take into account the difference in skill sets between service providers in health facilities and community resource persons and therefore be tailored to fit application to both users.
• The anticipated duration of this assignment shall be for a period of 15working days, covering the development and review of the job aids.
• The total working days will include submission of sample job aids to MCSP’s child health team for review.
• Any extension in the number of work days or work period must have the explicit written approval of the Child Health Team Lead.
• As there is no travel associated with the ability to deliver on these tasks, MCSP will not cover the cost of transportation, accommodation and M&IE.

Expected Deliverable and Time-frame:

• The period of this assignment is expected to commence in June, 2018.
• The Training and Development Specialist will develop a detailed activity plan for the execution of this consultancy and submitted to the Activity Manager on this assignment for review and concurrence.
• Sample job aids should be submitted for final review by 29th June 2018.

Reporting

• The Activity Manager for this assignment is the Supply Chain Technical Advisor with oversight functions by the Child Health Team Lead, MCSP Abuja and Senior Technical Advisor on Supply Chain, Washington DC.
• All technical and administrative responsibilities related to this assignment should be brought to his/her attention.