Short Term Technical Assistance
Short Term Technical Assistance
Voluntary and Informed Consent Consultant
In August 2021, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded University Research Co., LLC (URC) a five-year flagship health activity in Jordan. The USAID Health Services Quality Accelerator (HSQA) Activity (the Activity) aims to sustain and advance improvements in equitable reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) services, specifically targeting disadvantaged segments of the population. The Activity supports innovative approaches to improve access to and quality of RMNCH services in the public and private sectors and to strengthen the Ministry of Health’s (MOH’s) capacity to act as a steward for improving the quality of RMNCH services.
Background information relevant to the assignment:
RMNCH service providers sometimes face barriers when seeking free and informed consent from some populations in health facilities while delivering RMNCH services, especially marginalized groups including people who are incompetent in front of the law, such as married women under 18 years old and people with disabilities.
Accordingly, the USAID HSQA activity seeks qualified candidates to develop guidelines to address communication and other barriers to RMNCH voluntary and informed consent and to build the capacities of RMNCH workers to provide services based on voluntary and informed consent in addition to increasing their understanding of the principles of information and service accessibility. The suggested best practices required in the guidelines will include but are not limited to improving communication between service providers and beneficiaries, providing materials in accessible formats (visual, auditory), and scheduling additional time for counseling sessions.
The estimated level of effort (LOE): 40 working days February – August 2023.
Specific tasks:
- Defining free and Informed Consent.
- Legislative and policies framework
- Principles and requirements of free and informed consent in RMNCH
- Implementation of the principle of free and informed consent in RMNCH services- Cycle of services delivery/ practices and tactics.
- When is free and informed Consent required and when is it not
- How to address the expected challenges that affect obtaining free and informed consent.
Deliverables:
- Develop situational analysis after conducting a literature review, interviews, and focus groups around the free informed consent for RMNCH services, this revision will include legal and policy frameworks.
- Develop guidelines for considerations around obtaining informed consent in health facilities while delivering RMNCH services.
- Provide a policy paper describing the situation and strategizing the recommendations at the legislative and policies level and at the practices and tactics level to accelerate endorsing, adopting, and applying the guidelines.
- Develop and conduct TOT on free and informed consent.
- Develop the mentoring guidelines for the health staff who will apply the free informed consent guidelines.
Qualifications:
- Advanced university degree in Human Rights/Public Health/ Law.
- At least 10 years of experience of working on issues around a human rights approach to RMNCH services and inclusion.
- Experience working in humanitarian and development settings, at national level.
- Direct experience working with the marginalized groups who face barriers while access to information is an asset.
- Proved experience writing technical guidelines.
- Commitment and knowledge of health equity, diversity and inclusion, and participation under gender, age, and disability lens.
- Experience in training and developing training packages.
- Fluency in written and verbal English and Arabic
Qualified candidates should send their CVs along with a cover letter to email address: Jobs-HSQA@urc-chs.com no later than January 30, 2023
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