Supporting the Health Futures Strategic Dialogue in Mongolia

In 2019, the Western Pacific Regional Office of the WHO (WPRO), under the leadership of the Regional Director, endorsed its strategy for the Region, “For the Future” via broad consultations.  In “For the Future”, the countries committed to putting the future up front, to adapt health systems to the dynamic changes in the region. As part of implementation of the strategy, the Strategic Dialogue Unit (DIA) of WPRO, in close collaboration with the WHO Country Offices and WPRO technical focal points, has initiated and been implementing Health Futures Strategic Dialogue (HFSD).

The HFSD is a foresight-based process enabling Member States to develop and drive a longer-term agenda for change that will shape the future of health systems and population health and wellbeing in their country. The HFSD process involves rigorous analysis and debate on change drivers across health but also (geo) political, economic, social, technological and environmental dimensions; generating multiple future scenarios and leading to the formulation of long-term agendas for health systems change through back-casting. The rationale for this approach is that if the longer-term vision is clear, the shorter-term planning is more effective in preparing health systems for the future. Traditional planning generally strives to overcome problems and issues being faced at the time of planning and from experiences in the recent past. This retrospective approach can result in short-sighted changes that may not meet the challenges posed by a rapidly changing world with emerging environmental threats, demographic shifts and technological opportunities. By contrast, the HFSD is based on a prospective approach, by which a vision for the health future is developed and policies and plans to achieve that vision are formed through backcasting.

In addition, the HFSD process aims at the highest levels of political leadership and engages with a wide range of stakeholders from government, development partners, civil society, academia and private sector depending on a country and context. Inclusive participation will ensure both relevance and quality of the HFSD process and strengthen ownership of process outcomes and transformation agendas over time.

The first HFSD is underway in Mongolia. The aim of the process is to bring together senior leaders from the health sector, relevant ministries, academia, professional associations, and development partners and to enable a dialogue that leads to: 

• -           Identification and understanding of the priority driving forces affecting the future development of the health system and exploration of different scenarios for the health system in Mongolia.
• -           Agreement on a vision for the whole health system in Mongolia in 2050 through deep dives into priority areas;
• -           A change agenda for the health system detailing actions and investments that would help the country’s health system adapt to changing external conditions and realize its vision for health in 2050.

Segment 1 and 2: Engagement, Strategic Dialogue Workshop and Deep Dives (until July 2022).

The introductory strategic dialogue workshop was held in May 2021 in Ulaan Bataar. It involved policymakers from the Ministry of Health, and both health and non-health stakeholders. At this workshop, three themes were identified as strategic priorities for the future that require further exploration, leading to the next step in the process, the “Deep Dives”.

This phase is currently underway. The topics are:

• -           Healthy communities, healthy people: including a focus on vulnerable populations, NCDs, equity and aging
• -           Healthy environments: people live in an environment where they are thriving, and developing supportive and safeguarding environments to adapt to future changes
• -           Technology and innovation.

Three cross-agency working groups have been tasked by the MoH to drive this process, which is due to close in July 2022. The outputs of the deep dives will inform and shape the scenario building/visioning, backcasting and transformation agenda steps in the HFSD process.

Segment 3: Scenario Building (tentatively June 2022 to December 2022)

This third segment brings different stakeholders together to identify potential futures, define a “preferred future”, and identify pathways and opportunities to achieve that future through back-casting. It culminates in the development of a change agenda and the identification of “undesirable” futures to build resilience against. 

PURPOSE/SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE OF THE ACTIVITY

WHO requires the successful bidder, the Contractor, to carry out the following tasks:

• • With strategic direction from WPRO and WHO CO, co-creating and delivering a process for the development of future scenarios, a preferred future vision, and a change agenda formed through backcasting. This includes strategic stakeholder engagement and socialization approaches that will support the MoH to take ownership of the process and ensure an appropriate level of engagement from senior decision makers in Government.
• • Designating at least two individuals, a primary and secondary, to be focal persons responsible for the terms of reference above. Both persons should have the background, qualifications and skills required to accomplish these terms of reference, in terms of both facilitation skills and familiarity with the subject matter.
• • Producing workshop materials, identifying of key experts and speakers, creating and designing relevant inputs, and supporting their dissemination in coordination with WPRO focal points. This includes communications material (e.g., email templates, concept notes, planning documents) for communicating with co-instructors, facilitators and participants.
• • Producing post-workshop reports to support the dissemination of the change agenda within the relevant political spheres in Mongolia.
• • Documenting the process to generate best practices and enable course-corrections.

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES TO BE CARRIED OUT

Develop a backcasting and change agenda process from design to delivery of the agenda

The process should be adapted to the Mongolian context for three sub-phases based on lessons learnt from the previous segments of the strategic dialogue. 

The process should include:

• The design and delivery of an approach to develop and socialize scenarios for the future of the health system based on the outputs of the deep dives.

The scenario development phase should result in the participants in the process agreeing on a shared vision for the whole health system in Mongolia. This will involve identifying the scope of the scenarios based on the outputs of the deep dives, proposing a methodology to design the scenarios with Mongolian counterparts, writing up the scenarios and conducting a vision building exercise. The contractor will also be expected to identify and produce the required inputs (to stimulate thinking for scenarios and vision) and outputs to make sure the right audience gains the right level of familiarity with the scenarios. The contractor will also be expected to support content development, briefing of relevant teams and facilitators, including attendance at workshops. The format of these workshop may be hybrid, including a degree of remote facilitation. Products could include videos, written pieces etc.

• The design and delivery of approach to carry out a backcasting and change agenda process that ensures adequate buy-in from strategic levels in Government.

In this phase, it is particularly critical to engage the strategic level in the MOH (and possibly broader government) to make sure they will be empowered to drive the transformation agenda. It is therefore important that the right people are involved from the get go and throughout this phase. The contractor will be expected to support the design and delivery of this phase accordingly. This will include a stakeholder mapping and engagement strategy, as well as process and workshop design. The contractor will also be expected to lead on content development, and facilitation of the training-of-facilitators and workshops.

• The design and delivery of an approach to ensure the dissemination and institutionalization of the change agenda and corresponding products.

This part will aim to ensure alignment and to provide guidance on leading the change agenda within the MOH. In addition, the contractor will be expected to advise and support WHO and MOH to strategically position the outputs from the previous phases into various decision-making and planning processes within government, as well as support the joint dissemination of the project journey, findings, lessons learnt and impact to different stakeholders.

• Produce 2 reports that provide the outputs from the scenario/visioning phase and the backcasting and change agenda phase.  

The outputs may include:

5-10 page report detailing overall insights from the process, key implications from the final workshops and lessons learnt

Place of performance:

Remotely or Mongolia

Timelines:

The bidder should provide a detailed timetable with estimated costs for major deliverables. The project is to be finalized by December 2022.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

The Contractor shall be an institution operating in the field of futures and strategic foresight with proven expertise in applying futures methodologies in participatory and systemic, collaborative action between diverse stakeholders (across sectors, disciplines and professions) towards achieving a common purpose and goal. The institution should have demonstrated experience of having worked with UN agencies, academia, governments and community-based organizations and be highly skilled in relationship management and evaluation of complex projects. Previous experience working in the Mongolian context will be considered a plus. 

Mandatory:

1. Proven experience in the field of application of strategic foresight to guide long-term planning and capacity building of foresight approach.

2. Previous work with WHO, other international organizations and/or major institutions in the field of  application and institutionalization of strategic foresight with demonstrated experiences as follows:

• • 5+ years conducting high-level and multi-stakeholder workshops and dialogues related to futures and strategic foresight processes;
• • 5+ years leading and communicating futures and strategic foresight processes;
• • Extensive experience communicating complex issues while confidently working in emergent processes;
• • Evaluation of innovative and/or proof-of-concept approaches to demonstrate impact and outcome.

3. Experience working with the health sector and/or in Mongolia.

4. Working experience in partially or entirely virtually environments, particularly during COVID pandemic. *Note: The contractor should list and describe these experiences as part of the proposal. Reference checks will be conducted on winning bids.

Desirable:

• • Experience in 5+ years designing and implementing action research related to futures and strategic foresight processes leading to policy development and impact at ground level;
• • Availability to provide consultant working onsite along with WHO Country Offices

SUBMISSIONS

Qualified and interested specialists should submit the following documents to the Supply Officer through WP RO UNGM at < wproungm@who.int > by 20 May 2022

• • Company Profile {for institutional applications} and CV of project manager
• •  Technical proposal indicating solution, methodology and timelines, in addition to the below annexes
  • o   Annex 1: Acknowledgement Form
  • o   Annex 2: Confidentiality Undertaking
  • o   Annex 3: Proposal Completeness Form
  • o   Annex 6: Self-Declaration Form
• • Financial proposal

Please use Tender Notice No. WPRO/2022-05/DSI_DIA/173566 as subject to all submission. Only successful candidates will be contacted.

Last day of receiving queries for this tender is on 13 May 2022