Technical Support of healthy island monitoring in the Pacific: Indicator and data revision and data quality and analysis support

BACKGROUND

At the first Pacific Health Ministers Meeting (PHMM) in 1995, ministers declared their vision of Healthy Islands. Findings from the 20-year review in 2015 concluded that the Healthy Islands Vision should remain the unifying vision for health development in the Pacific, but progress must be monitored. A secretariat, the Pacific Community (SPC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) developed the reporting mechanism leading to the endorsement of Healthy Island Vision's monitoring framework in August 2017.  Currently, the HIMF comprises 48 mandatory indicators and 31 optional indicators from different global standardized reporting frameworks such as the SDGs, the 2016 Monitoring universal health coverage (UHC) in the Western Pacific regional framework, the SDG Pacific Headline Indicators, the Dashboard for Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Action developed by the Pacific Monitoring Alliance for NCD Action (MANA), the International Health Regulation (IHR) 2005 core capacities and the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies III among others. The report and data cover 22 countries and territories in the Region.  The WHO has concluded the data collecting period for the year 2021 report. Many countries have not updated their data since 2017, and there are several missing values in data submissions in 2020. To improve quality of national and regional reporting, WHO decided to conduct a series of online consultations and /workshops with countries.

To improve data quality and analysis for the third progress report and beyond, WHO and countries require additional support during the pandemic to revise the indicators and the framework (feasibility of reporting), assistance on further analysis of that data, and potentially supporting countries correcting reporting errors.

The longer-term objective is to support developing a robust data quality assessment and tools and data analysis plan for Healthy Island Monitoring Framework. Part of the data collection and validation/improvement efforts are building the national HIS personnel's capacity to use the data from their national systems, screen and clean data for quality assurance, and analyse and interpret data to prepare reports HIMF reporting.

 

PURPOSE/SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE OF THE ACTIVITY

To support developing contents and implementation & facilitation on a series of regional online webinars to improve the comprehensiveness of reports and data quality

• • The webinar series should consist of online lectures/presentations, discussion sessions, and hands-on exercises. Participants are expected to provide insights into the data collection and indicator compilation and dissemination processes of their countries. Each challenging indicator needs to be reviewed independently with participants (online break out groups etc.).
• • Participants understand the concepts and frameworks for the production and dissemination of HIMF and related SDG statistics and can produce selected indicators using their national data. If the data is not available, we need to understand gaps.
• • Participants gain in-depth knowledge on the challenges and opportunities of working with different types of data sources and departments required in the compilation of the indicators and how to conduct periodic data quality audits/assessments.

To prepare recommendations to add, delete, revise and replace HIMF Indicators.

 In 2018 Comprehensive Review of the HIMF indicators, including the proposed changes, were conducted. The review was followed by incremental changes adopted in 2019 and 2020.  The review suggestions include replacing or revising existing indicators, deleting a few indicators, and adding several new ones. The current assignment should include revising the Comprehensive Review report and assessing the technical feasibility and political appetite of suggested changes with WHO and countries.  The guiding principles for the indicator review process are the following:

• • Consider investments already made at national and international levels, and not undermine ongoing efforts (indicators should be aligned with SDGs);
• • Avoid imposing significant additional burdens on national statistical work; and
• • Making space for improvement while limiting the scope of changes and keeping the size of the regional indicator framework about the same (or reduce the number of core indicators).

 

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES TO BE CARRIED OUT

• • Support for collecting additional data if required, implement data quality checks, support data analysis and visualization, including co-authoring the parts of the regional report (jointly with WHO team). Support building (requirements) for the dashboard development.
• • Development of data quality assessment and data analysis plan in a small island context.
• • Prepare recommendations to add, delete, revise and replace HIMF Indicators
• • Communication with countries to facilitate understanding of data gaps and interpreting of results

Output/s

Detailed scope of work includes:

At present the work consists of following tasks:

• • Extract, collate analyze the data and statistics using various sources, if possible, to fill the gaps jointly with WHO, partners and countries
• • Support data quality assurance/audit process for the third report and develop longer term data quality and audit plan for small islands
• • Support WHO on developing dashboard for HIMF indicators (data values)
• • Support report writing (part of the report focusing on data collection, reporting and data quality)
• • Provide recommendations to add, delete, revise and replace HIMF Indicators that are agreed with participating countries and areas and the new framework with metadata is drafted.
• • Explore and make recommendations to ensure strategic & integrated data collection coordination at country level

 

METHODS TO CARRY OUT THE ACTIVITY

The contractor is working under the WHO and from organizational perspective activities will be supervised by HIS Technical Officers in DPS/WPRO.

Output/s

Detailed scope of work includes:

• • Extract, collate, analyse the data and statistics using various sources if possible to fill the gaps jointly with WHO, partners, and countries
• • Support data quality assurance/audit process for the third report and develop longer-term data quality and audit plan for small islands
• • Support WHO on developing a dashboard for HIMF indicators (data reporting requirements)
• • Support report writing (part of the report focusing on data collection, reporting, and data quality)
• • Recommendations to add, delete, revise and replace HIMF Indicators are agreed upon with participating countries and areas, and the new framework with metadata is drafted.

A. Data extraction, review, gap analysis and data quality checks

• • Data extraction, which consists of the compilation of indicators from existing data sets with data cleaning and removing outliers jointly with WHO and countries
• • Data gap analysis
  • Additional data request from countries jointly with WHO
  • Additional global/external data collection
  • Identify potential issues and alternative options to address data gaps
• • Development or testing of data quality review (DQR) methodology at regional level and develop DQR for HIMF (how to do assessment of a core set of tracer indicators to identify gaps and errors in reporting and the plausibility of trends in health-facility data reported the previous year). This work would include analysis of extreme values and inconsistencies and provide technical assistance for countries to analyse and quality assurance for provided data. All data are subject to quality limitations such as missing values, bias, measurement error, and human errors in data entry and computation should be presented and discussed with countries.
• • Facilitation of the online workshops and presentation/training through webinar on DQR, method and results. Also advising of the countries how to conduct audits, routine and regular reviews of data quality built into a system of checks of the HMIS or other programme reporting systems and/or disease specific area (3 countries are using DHIS2, the rest of the countries rely on paper-based books)

B. Data analysis and visualization

• • Data analysis of indicators already available, or of indicators and disaggregations that first needs to be extracted, to identify trends, correlations and causality between different indicators and data sets (country/time trend analysis – this is 3rd report meaning there are potential to do some data analysis over time).
• • This work may include numerical manipulation and analysis using statistical methods but may also include the need to prepare visualizations and more complex data story telling
• • Support data visualization with appropriate software and provide ideas of data presentation for graphic designer (infographics)

C. Report writing and recommendations for the 4th data collection round and developing data audit and routine data quality assessment plan

• • Support report writing and analysis for specific sections of the report (indicator framework changes, data quality and gap issues)
• • Provide recommendations to improve indicator framework and data collection including data quality improvement proces

 

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION

Essential:  

Degree in public health, epidemiology, statistics or related fields

Desirable: Master’s degree

 

EXPERIENCE

Essential:

• • At least 7 years’ experience working in statistics and analysis of routine admirative health data and survey data, data quality assessments, health information systems and indicators frameworks, reporting and dashboard development (if team combination could be junior and senior data analytics)
• • Previous experience with WPRO and the Pacific highly desired.
• • Strong track record of technically editing high-level documents and research on health data

Desirable:

Previous experience with similar work on indicator-based data products highly desired

Team preferred over individual due to scope of the project (48 indicators collected across 21 countries)

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE

• • Proven scientific writing experience
• • Analytical rigor and attention to detail

 

LANGUAGES

English

 

COMPETENCIES

The contractor should have demonstrated experience in working from distance

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Payment schedule:

• 25% on receipt of signed APW and workplan/Inception report
• 25% on finalized data collection/draft report and first webinar conducted (ideally by beginning of April)
• 50% of the final products and work conducted and approved (webinars, data quality and analysis plan)

STARTING DATE: February/March

 

APPLICATIONS

Qualified and interested specialists should submit their CV {for individual contractors} or Company Profile {for institutional applications} and Expression of Interest {cover letter} to the Supply Officer through WP RO UNGM at < wproungm@who.int > by 11 February 2021. 

The cover letter should outline how their experience and qualifications make them a suitable candidate for this position and should include their proposed daily consultancy fee and total cost estimate and availability.

Please use Tender Notice No. 121234 as subject to all submission. Only successful candidates will be contacted.