Afghanistan: Team Lead, Health Facilities Study, Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), Afghanistan

Team Lead, Health Facilities Study, Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), Afghanistan

Company Profile: MSI, a Tetra Tech Company, is a Washington, DC metro area international development firm with a 35-year history of delivering development results across the world. Our core expertise is in the fields of monitoring and evaluation (M&E), institutional development, public sector management, governance and anti-corruption. MSI has implemented projects in 90 countries around the world such as Jordan, Kenya, Indonesia, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Colombia, and Mexico. As one of the leading companies in our field, MSI has partnered with organizations across all sectors of international development to support clients ranging from large bilateral and multilateral donors such as USAID, the World Bank and the UNDP to national and local governments, NGOs, think tanks, foundations and universities. For more information on MSI, please visit our website at www.msiworldwide.com.**Project Summary:**

Since 2015, the World Bank has engaged Management Systems International (MSI), a Tetra Tech company, to provide third party monitoring (TPM) and verification for select ARTF projects. The World Bank established the ARTF TPM program to achieve the following objectives:

1. Given an increasingly challenging security environment, the TPM program provides critical data from the field as input to the World Bank's implementation support and GoA line ministries' own monitoring systems. The TPM program provides data on nationwide project sites, including asset verification and quality assurance, where World Bank staff are not always able to systematically visit the sites of geographically widely disbursed projects.
2. The TPM program provides additional evidence that World Bank-funded programs are being implemented correctly, provides assurance to donors, focusing on infrastructure quality assurance and social and environmental safeguards, gender issues and select financial/fiduciary aspects.
3. MSI serves as the Supervisor Agent (SA) which provides GoA line ministries with project monitoring and data collection support and shows how such practices could improve GoA project performance and results. This also helps strengthen GoA line ministries' own monitoring programs. The SA reports directly to the World Bank, but also works closely with GoA line ministries responsible for project implementation at local and central levels.

Please note: Both Afghan local nationals and expatriates can apply for this position.

Position Summary:

MSI has been tasked with designing and conducting a pilot test of an innovative approach to assessing service delivery statistics in public health facilities in Afghanistan under its Third Party Monitoring contract of the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) with the World Bank. The main purpose of this study, which will take place in 20-25 health facilities of different types, will be to help the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the Bank develop and test methodologies to help them rapidly explain the reasons that specific facilities perform substantially higher or lower levels in select service delivery statistics. While the specific details have yet to be finalized, the Ministry will use its HMIS to identify statistical outliers in one or two areas of service delivery, such as immunizations delivered or ANC visits, where one or more facilities is reporting much higher or lower levels of service than either its historical average or that of comparable facilities.

The MoPH/World Bank will select a small sample of health facilities (20-25) of either the same or different types based on their identification as outliers in terms of their positive or negative performance against one or more service delivery indicators. These indicators will most likely be selected from the suite of metrics on which results-based payments to the contracted health service delivery NGOs are based. Once it has received the sampled list, MSI will conduct field data collection at the facility, in the local community, and at the provincial level to:

1. Assess the accuracy/validity of the reported outlier service delivery statistics; and
2. Explain the root causes for the positive or negative performance observed in these outlier indicators.

Data collection methodologies for 1 and 2 above will include: a review of records and record-keeping procedures; interviews with facility staff; interviews with a sample of clients at the facility the day of the site visit, group interviews with community members in one or more villages close to the facility, and interviews with NGO and MoPH staff at the provincial level. Data collection may also include methodologies required to assess other performance factors relevant to the indicators in question such as the presence or absence of required inputs (equipment, supplies, etc.).

Estimated LOE: 60 Days

Responsibilities:

MSI would like to recruit a highly-skilled and experienced Afghan national public health practitioner and researcher to serve as Study Team Leader with MSI for a period of around three months in Kabul. The main responsibilities would include:

• Working closely with the Ministry of Public Health, their monitoring agent KIT, and the World Bank team leaders of the SEHAT and SEHAT Mandi projects, identify the best data collection methodologies for meeting the study objectives to assess the most relevant facility and community-level factors for the outlier outcomes of interest.
• Modify and/or develop the corresponding data collection tools, many of which will have already been developed and tested by the Ministry and KIT.
• Working in partnership with MSI and its local subcontractor Altai, train data collectors in the appropriate use of the final tools
• Supervise pilot testing of the tools, preferably on-site, in one or more facilities and communities from the original sample
• Modify final tools and methodologies as needed based on the results of the pilot test
• Retrain data collectors as needed
• Supervise full-scale data collection, with some on-site oversight as needed to ensure quality assurance
• Periodically review completed instruments and data sets as entered by Altai
• Write final report

Required Skills & Experience:

The desired qualifications of the Study Team Leader include:

• A medical or public health degree at the Master's level or higher
• Substantial experience working in the health sector in Afghanistan designing and implementing facility- and community-level assessments related to service delivery
• Fluency in one or more local languages as well as spoken and written English
• Demonstrated experience writing high-quality reports detailing the results and corresponding recommendations from field research in the health sector
• Availability to travel to and within secure areas of Afghanistan to oversee field data collection in selected facilities

Only candidates who have been selected for an interview will be contacted. No phone calls, please.

MSI is an EEO/AA/ADA Veterans Employer.

PI102383753

Apply Here

Apply Here