Gender Technical Advisor, USAID Local Health System Sustainability (LHSS) Full-Time

The Local Health System Sustainability (LHSS) Project is a 5-year, $209 million global task order that works to strengthen health systems as a means to achieve universal health coverage and improve population health and well-being. Interventions will focus on reducing financial barriers, holding health services accountable for meeting all clients’ needs and making sure that the care patients receive meets minimum standards.

Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) in LHSS The consortium, with technical leadership from consortium partner Banyan Global, will proactively integrate gender, women’s, and girls’ empowerment and social inclusion into all phases of the project lifecycle, recognizing that these are development goals as well as accelerators toward achieving UHC. The finalized Gender Strategy, led by consortium partner Banyan Global, provides guidance for the consortium to integrate GESI in both core and country activities to ensure that project activities, monitoring, evaluation, and learning are responsive to USAID Gender Equality and Women’s’ Empowerment policies and US Government legislation. This guidance should be responsive to all the GESI Strategy Principles, linked to LHSS’s principles, but be tailored to the country-level priorities.

LHSS CHW Core Global Activity Overview The LHSS Project is implementing an activity that aims to contribute to the global knowledge base on the design, financing, and implementation of career progression approaches for community health workers (CHWs). This Activity is being implemented in three phases. In Phase 1 LHSS finalized the technical brief in October 2023, and in parallel has moved forward with co-designing and implementing technical assistance in three countries for Phase 2 Namibia, Mozambique, and Tanzania. In Phase 3, planned for June 2024, LHSS will disseminate documented results and learnings.

Mozambique Background Although Mozambique has a long-standing CHW program, to date, CHWs in the public sector are not considered civil servants and have no formal career progression pathways or opportunities. Additionally, although the MOH aims to have a gender-balanced CHW workforce, Mozambique is unique in that an estimated 70 percent of CHWs in the country are men. As an initial step to remedy the challenge, a legal framework that clarifies their role, scope of practice, standardized training and incentives, and other program parameters is under development. Once ministerial approval is obtained, policy implementation will require frameworks, standard operating procedures, and tools. The reform process presents an opportunity for the Activity to support the Ministry operationalize these objectives, particularly those related to CHW career progression and GESI integration.

One of four interventions that LHSS intends to co-implement with the MOH is to conduct a gender analysis to understand gender- and social norms-informed barriers for women to enter the field and progress in their career as CHWs. The overall objective of this intervention is to understand the barriers and enablers of recruiting women CHWs by the community members and program implementers, and later provide equal opportunity for progression. LHSS will conduct operations research in selected sites to obtain diverse perspectives from all stakeholders (CHWs, community leaders, and MOH program managers at the community, district, regional, and national levels), document current practices, and provide evidence-based recommendations. The findings from this operations research will inform and support the MOH in designing gender-responsive strategies and tools to improve recruitment and promote equity-focused promotion practices.

The consultant, as part of the team consisting of LHSS Mozambique and Banyan Global, will provide technical support and quality assurance on the CHW Activity’s interventions in Mozambique to ensure USAID’s principles and policies on gender equality and women’s empowerment are duly incorporated in all workstreams. The local consultant will serve as a gender technical advisor working closely with and reporting to the CHW Activity Mozambique country lead lead and will support the gender analysis and other workstreams, including the career progression framework and supportive supervision interventions. Duties include, but are not limited to:

• Supporting implementation of the gender analysis operations research implementation (quality assurance of data collection tools, training data collectors, and reviewing preliminary qualitative data analysis findings), support for validation workshop design and co-facilitation, and review/provide feedback on how to integrate GESI considerations in the supportive supervision guidelines and tools and the career progression framework.
• Provide quality assurance review of initial findings report and manuscript.
• Serve as a gender technical expert and advisor to review and provide guidance on the design and implementation of the supportive supervision and career progression framework workstreams.

The consultant, to be hired by Banyan Global, will complete the following tasks/deliverables.

The consultant will preferably have experience conducting gender analyses (USAID gender analyses preferred), integrating GESI (GESI integration in health programming preferred), conducting mixed-methods research, including gender data collection and analysis experience, and experience in health systems strengthening programs. Additional qualifications include:

• Bachelor’s degree with a minimum of 8 years of experience in a relevant field, such as gender studies, women’s studies, international development, or a related social science discipline, or Master’s degree with 6 years of experience.
• Familiarity with USAID (or other agencies’) policies and procedures related to gender integration and/or gender equality and women’s empowerment programming preferred, especially gender analysis requirements within ADS 205.
• Experience collecting, analyzing and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative data and developing easy-to-understand informational materials based on the data, such as presentations and short reports that outline trends and recommend strategies to improve performance.
• Familiarity with available gender analysis resources (from USAID and other sources) strongly encouraged
• Excellent writing and oral communication skills with the ability to synthesize information into clear and concise written or presented materials for diverse audiences.
• Proficiency in English and Portuguese required.
• Proficiency in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Google, and online communication tools.
• Ability to communicate diplomatically and clearly.

Banyan Global is committed to diversity and inclusion in our workforce. We do not discriminate against employees based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation or gender expression. We recognize the importance of a diverse and inclusive workplace and intentionally strive for diversity and inclusion at all organizational levels.