Consultancy: Wasting Cascade Guideline Writer Consultant - Req.#580378

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. 

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. 

And we never give up. 

For every child, HOPE!

Consultancy Title: Wasting Cascade Guideline Writer Consultant Section/Division/Duty Station: Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM), NYHQ Duration: March 15, 2025 to August 31, 2025 Home/ Office Based: Home-based/REMOTE 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 over 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 for developing 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. BACKGROUND Purpose of Activity/ Assignment: The purpose of the contract is to support the D&A nutrition team with the development and writing of global guidance on Monitoring the Child Wasting Cascade with appropriate technical detail to facilitate the standardized and regular monitoring of child wasting programming.   The guide on monitoring the wasting cascade will include indicators, definitions, and the recommended data sources and analyses to follow the child population through the steps of prevention, screening and treatment of child wasting.  The guidance will include methods for assessment of the target populations, calculation of locally contextualized estimates of annual burden of acute malnutrition and guidance on the monitoring of screening, referrals, program admissions, exits and relapses, and coverage estimates. The global guidance intends to provide recommendations on monitoring of wasting to support programming on child wasting for all contexts and to support the global monitoring of wasting. This work will address outstanding monitoring issues related to the use of non-harmonized indicators for the regular and annual reporting of child wasting programming.  The clarifications on a comprehensive set of indicators needed to follow children through prevention services, screening, treatment and potential relapse or reoccurrence will support countries to strengthen monitoring and be the main reference for standardized indicators for programmes to address child wasting.  The recommended indicators and data collection methods will improve the estimation and global tracking of numbers of children suffering from wasting and severe wasting.  Scope of Work: 1. Develop Draft Outline of Global Guidance Review all relevant background work on the Child Wasting Cascade conducted (basic materials will be shared and scope to be discussed with UNICEF team). Create a draft outline that aligns with the structure and approach of UN technical guidelines used for public health Compile definitions of monitoring indicators from all available sources for the Child Wasting Cascade currently or previously used.   The consultant will collect feedback from regular technical meetings and update draft outline following the guidance from Program Group and Data & Analytics UNICEF colleagues.  2. Produce first draft of the global guidance on Monitoring the Child Wasting Cascade Draft first draft of the global guidance for monitoring the prevention, screening and treatment of child wasting in a simple, direct and implementation friendly language. This draft should include a core set of proposed indicators and rationale, with clear numerators and denominators and proposed data sources. Collect and integrate the findings from reports on pilot testing of specific aspects of the child wasting cascade. The piloting activities will be coordinated by other counterparts  The consultant will collect feedback from regular technical meetings and update the first draft of global guidance following the guidance from Program Group and Data & Analytics UNICEF colleagues.  3. Produce second draft of the global guidance on Monitoring the Child Wasting Cascade Collate expert inputs from a round of reviews from monitoring and implementation experts to revise the draft guidance document The round of reviews will be conducted with: • Country Counterparts • NGO and other technical partners • United Nations Agencies Following collection of feedback, refine the indicators and c