Immunization Demand and Coordination Consultant

• Location: Accra, Ghana
• Start Date: December 9, 2022
• LOE: 36 days
• Terms of contract: 4 months; Consultant
• Reports to: Senior Technical Officer, US-based
• Purpose: To provide technical support to several activities under the Gavi CDS contract

JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI) is a US-based not-for-profit organization that specializes in public health. For the past 30 years, JSI has been providing technical assistance to health programs in more than 106 countries.

The Immunization Demand and Coordination Consultant for COVID-19 activities will be based in Accra, Ghana and will support JSI in its implementation of the Gavi-funded CDS Immunization technical assistance activities in Ghana. The Immunization Technical Consultant will support two activities to strengthen COVID-19 vaccination in the country. The consultant will support the outlines as follow below:

Activity 1: Assess Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy among HWs and make recommendations to improve uptake

Specific activities include:

• Consultant responsible for adaptation of the Behavioral and Social Drivers tool for health workers to the Ghana context.
• Consultant will conduct interviews using the BeSD tool with approximately 20 HWs. The consultant is responsible for qualitative analysis of the data and development of a summary report with recommendations for how to address issues identified through the interviews.
• The consultant will organize a dissemination of the findings via a zoom meeting with the Ghanaian EPI and partners to discuss the recommendations and develop an action plan to implement recommendations. A summary of the agreed upon recommendations will be provided at the end of the meeting.

Activity 2: Supporting Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI) teams for multi- sectoral coordination for sub-national rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

Specific Activities include:

• The consultant will work with EPI, School Health Education Programme (SHEP) and Department of Social Welfare (DSW) in 2 priority regions to review and assess the existing coordination mechanisms/meeting processes.
• As part of this process the consultant will develop a questionnaire to be completed by coordination members to examine the enablers and barriers that are influencing coordination efforts. The consultant will synthesize and summarize the findings from the questionnaire.
• Using data from the questionnaire, the consultant will develop brief recommendations to improve coordination and communication on COVID-19 activities in the two program regions.
• The consultant will support a virtual orientation for each regional team to discuss next steps and plans to operationalize improvements. Actions plans from each orientation meeting will be developed by the consultant.

Position responsibilities

Deliverables:

• Weekly email to Supervisor with bullets of activities conducted in the previous week and plan for the week ahead;
• Full assessment reports, and data sets, powerpoints and briefs
• Complete and timely expense reports for all trips taken;
• Detailed trip report for all trips taken;

Activity 1:

• Adapted BeSD tool
• Qualitative interview database
• Summary report with recommendations
• Facilitation plan and materials for dissemination
• Summary of dissemination meeting

Activity 2:

• Firstly, Questionnaire for coordination members
• Secondly, Summary of data from questionnaire
• Thirdly, Brief of recommendations from questionnaire analysis
• Afterwards, Facilitation plan and materials for dissemination
• Finally, Action plan for each regional orientation meeting