ThinkWell seeks a consultant or firm initially over 8 months in 2023 to support the Strategic Purchasing for Primary Health Care (SP4PHC) team to mainstream a gender perspective into its activities to examine how strategic purchasing can better support gender equity.

Overview
The SP4PHC project aims to improve how governments purchase primary health care (PHC) services. ThinkWell implements the SP4PHC project in collaboration with government institutions and local research partners in six countries (Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uganda) with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Through its investments, BMGF aims "to give greater agency to women, who play crucial roles in promoting health as mothers, patients, nurses, and community health workers". ThinkWell, and specifically the SP4PHC project fully supports these aims.

Within the remit of PHC, maternal, newborn, and child health and family planning services are a priority for the SP4PHC project. Making purchasing of these services more strategic should, by definition, direct more resources to those women and girls most in need, by reducing financial barriers to access and improving the quality of services delivered. The benefits of reproductive health services extend beyond health to women's empowerment and social and economic development; thus, SP4PHC should have a positive impact on women's empowerment, particularly amongst the most vulnerable in society.

However, we recognize that to maximize the gender-equity benefits of the project we cannot only rely on these generalized impacts, but also need to look beyond them: we need to be more intentional about how we consider gender. ThinkWell aims to integrate a gender perspective into SP4PHC activities to examine how strategic purchasing can directly support gender equity, through developing a gender strategy. This will apply a gender lens throughout our work: analyzing and supporting reforms to policies, systems, and cultures around strategic purchasing from a gender perspective. The strategy will also inform ThinkWell's technical approach to mainstreaming gender in health financing work more broadly, beyond the SP4PHC project.

To do this we aim to (1) mainstream gender in the team's approach to strategic purchasing, and (2) identify and explore specific learning questions in the interface of strategic purchasing with gender.

Our teams need to recognize that health systems, and specifically purchasing, reforms may have different impacts on men, women, and gender-diverse people, whether those people are patients, providers or decision makers, and to be able to assess those different impacts.

Scope of Work
We anticipate five key stages to enabling our work on gender and would like a consultant/firm to support us particularly on the first four, using these to build capacity within our teams to enable the fifth.

1. Awareness: develop greater gender-awareness across the teams;
2. Desire: spark curiosity about the gendered impacts of purchasing;
3. Knowledge: develop knowledge about how the teams can undertake gender analysis through their work;
4. Action: provide teams with tools to undertake gender analysis and recommend related actions;
5. Reinforcement: provide them with ongoing support to enable them to mainstream gender through their work.

Core Areas of Work
We anticipate three broad areas of work that the consultant/firm will support:

1. Organize and facilitate workshops with our teams to facilitate gender mainstreaming, specifically to raise awareness of the importance of a gender lens through our work, increase a desire to undertake gender analysis and provide some knowledge and tools about how to do this.
2. Help our teams to articulate learning or research questions that are relevant to gender within their workstreams, based on global or local knowledge gaps
3. Share some tools that can be used for gender analysis and provide some training on how to use these.

Additional Area of Work

As part of our objective to identify and explore specific learning questions in the interface of strategic purchasing with gender, we will seek to partner with local research institutions to answer common questions that two or more countries explore and develop cross-country learning products. We would like a consultant to lead this effort across countries by:

1. Co-designing the cross-country learning agenda in the interface of strategic purchasing with gender
2. Guiding implementation of the cross-country learning agenda
3. Supporting synthesis and dissemination of findings across countries.

The Consultant/firm will closely collaborate with the SP4PHC Gender Lead, SP4PHC Technical Director, and country teams. The Consultant/firm will report to the SP4PHC Gender Lead.

Deliverables
Core Areas of Work

• Workshop to develop greater gender-awareness across SP4PHC country and global teams (quarter 2 of 2023)
  • Workshop planning
  • Workshop delivery
  • Workshop report

• Workshop to spark curiosity about the gendered impacts of purchasing and to develop knowledge about how the team can undertake gender analysis through their work (quarter 2 or quarter 3 of 2023)
  • Workshop planning
  • Workshop delivery
  • Workshop report
• Active participation in discussions with SP4PHC country and global teams and/or local research partners and global agencies to determine to knowledge gap(s) that the project can address
  • Meeting notes drafted
• Advise SP4PHC country and global teams on the methods/tools to undertake gender analysis and recommend related actions
• Review and provide inputs to concept notes, briefs, journal manuscripts, and other written outputs as needed

Additional Area of Work

• Concept note articulating the common questions that two or more countries explore
• Research protocol and associated data collection tools that will be used to gather information in each country
• Country plans to guide data collection and analysis in each country
• Coordination with SP4PHC country teams and research partners in each country to operationalize the country plans
• Synthesis of findings across countries in collaboration with SP4PHC global and country teams and research partners in each country

• Advanced degree in public health, public policy, health economics or related field
• Minimum 10 years undertaking gender and gender-equity analysis of health systems; experience of gender analysis with regard to health financing functions, and particularly purchasing is preferred
• Experience developing research tools for gender and gender-equity for health systems (e.g., data collection and analysis methods, analytical frameworks)
• Strong understanding of health financing, particularly strategic purchasing (enabling governments and others to adopt a more evidence-based approach to purchasing and resource allocation)
• Extensive experience designing, organizing, and facilitating workshops and discussions
• Excellent presentation, writing, and verbal communication skills in English. Fluency in French will be a plus
• Track record in publishing peer-reviewed journal articles
• Excellent cross-cultural communication skills, including the ability to relate respectfully with staff at all levels, ages, genders, nationalities, and orientations as well as across work areas
• Demonstrated interest and ability in growing, mentoring and coaching staff
• Demonstrated ability to engage effectively with external partners and stakeholders
• Demonstrated experience in contributing to multi-country projects
• Demonstrated experience working with low- and middle-income country research organizations
• Exceptional analytical and problem-solving capabilities
• An independent thinker who also enjoys working in a team

TO APPLY:
Interested consultants/firms are requested to submit a technical and cost proposal by April 24, 2023. The technical proposal should be between 3-5 pages long and it must describe how the consultant would implement the proposed scope of work, (split into two parts, namely "core areas of work" and "additional area of work"), including brief biography of prior experience with respect to the requirements listed above. The curriculum vitae should be submitted as supporting document.

The cost proposal must be split into two parts: (1) the first part must include all direct costs of the consultant to undertake the activities listed in the "core areas of work" and a budget narrative (no more than 1 pages) detailing the assumptions made, and (2) the second part must include all direct costs of the consultant to undertake the activities listed in the "additional area of work" and a budget narrative (no more than 1 pages) detailing the assumptions made.

-Interested consultants can submit a technical and cost proposal covering only one part of the proposed scope of work ("core areas of work" or "additional area of work").

-We estimate needing 25 days of a consultant's time over 8 months in 2023 to undertake the activities listed in the "core areas of work" section.

-We require the consultant to provide an estimate of the level of effort needed to undertake the activities listed in the "additional area of work" section.