Health Resilience Project Learning Consultant – UNICEF & World Bank Joint Initiative, Programme Group, Health Section, remote. Req# 588772

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines fordeveloping countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

 

Consultancy: Health Resilience Project Learning Consultant – UNICEF & World Bank Joint Initiative

Duty Station: Programme Group, Health Section

Duration: 15 Jan 2026 – 15 Jul 2026

Home/ Office Based: Remote

 

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

To document and synthesize lessons learned from UNICEF–World Bank partnerships in fragile and conflictaffected contexts (FCV), focusing on sustaining primary health care systems. The consultant will produce a learning document and agency-specific notes to guide future strategic, operational, and financial cooperation.   Scope of Work: Background. While often the World Bank UNICEF partnership is non-financial, collaborating to advance common objectives for maternal and child health outcomes, recently UNICEF and the World Bank have amassed considerable experience over the past several years in helping sustain primary health systems at scale in situations where, for any of a variety of reasons, there has been a breakdown in trust between development partners and national authorities, such that donors feel they cannot directly support national systems. When UNICEF (and others) step forward as an intermediary or ‘third party’ for World Bank investment, difficult questions about the value and sustainability of investments are increasingly raised. In several cases, countries programmes face an institutional and/or fiscal cliff justified to safeguard continuity of a basic package of services but less certain on longer-term benefits. In many cases the path, post project is uncertain and/or unclear. Such contexts have demanded shifts in traditional programme models and operational tools adapted to the situation. Currently, there is no specific guidance for country teams on how to adapt programme and operational modalities support roles traditionally played exclusively by the Ministry of Health in a country. The proposed inquiry aims to document lessons learned to provide strategic and technical guidance (both shared and agency specific) to close this gap. Working across mutually agreed themes and guiding questions (see initial draft attached) the consultant will lead a lesson-learned exercise, designing and collecting data from KII and available reports, provide a summary analysis working as closely as possible with WB counterpart. Five countries of primary interest include: Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, and Myanmar. Leadership across the following steps are anticipated.   1. Inception period. 4-8 weeks a. Desk review. Collect and review existing documentation, including project design and end points, key reports to highlight common, recurring issues b. Refine the themes and guiding questions from the initial list (below). c. Develop initial list of UNICEF and World Bank key informants for individual and group interviews.   2. Data collection, snowballing. 4-8 weeks a. Conduct and document initial interviews based on inception report/plan b. During interviews, identify additional information that may help to better understand specific themes. c. Briefly document the KII   3. Analysis and report writing 4-6 weeks a. Prepare a draft report, as much as possible working closely with WB counterpart of 20-30 pages (max) plus case studies to illustrate specific themes as useful b.Review draft reporting with UNICEF and wider steering committee c.Finalize report with accompanying powerpoint to deliver to UNICEF/World Bank Leadership and useful as orientation to future project development, design Governance • The consultant will be supervised by Senior Advisor Health in Emergencies. • Engage with wider UNICEF and WB steering committee periodically to receive guidance, suggestions. This will include Associate Director, MNCH, Advisors for WB partnership, Senior Advisor, PHC. Others from Supply, Legal, Risk Management will be added as needed.  

Terms of Reference / Key Deliverables:

Work Assignment Overview/Deliverables and Outputs/Delivery deadline