International Consultant to Support Nutrition Information Systems Strengthening in Lao PDR, Vientiane, Lao PDR, 10 months

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

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For every child, the right to nutrition 

UNICEF has been working on strengthening multisectoral nutrition information systems since 2018 through the EU funded National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN) programme and also through a joint programme with WHO (also EU funded) that sought to strengthen health system data on nutrition through DHIS2. UNICEF is currently supporting the Government of Lao PDR to the scale up nutrition interventions in 11 out of 18 provinces in the country under Child Nutrition Fund (CNF). To continue supporting both the information needs for the new NPAN monitoring, support strengthening capacities of Government officials on nutrition evidence-based planning as well as to monitor progress of the CNF, UNICEF is looking to hire an International Consultant with strong experience in management on nutrition data and information systems.

How can you make a difference? 

The consultant shall be partially based in UNICEF office with frequent interactions at the Ministries of Health and Finance. She/ he shall work closely with Nutrition section teams and other sectoral departments to ensure smooth coordination for reporting on nutrition data. The consultant will also work in collaboration with a National Consultant. More specifically, in consultation with the UNICEF Nutrition Team, the consultant will support on the following areas:

Data Generation, Quality and Analysis

• Collaborate with MOH and WHO to support individual health trackers as part of DHIS2, including tracking for treatment of severe acute malnutrition.
• Support analysis of national/ provincial nutrition data for trends and program performance. Support MOH to conduct routine data quality assessments and provide feedback.
• Develop templates for dashboards and scorecards for decision-makers.
• Support data generation and dissemination through research, surveys, etc.

Capacity Building

• Organize and deliver training for government staff on data collection, quality assurance, and analysis.
• Develop user-friendly SOPs and guidelines for nutrition data management as required.
• Carry out programmatic visits to assess the quality of implementation and to provide support to government officials at all levels.

M&E, reporting and Knowledge Sharing

• Assist in preparing CNF reports (quarterly, 6-monthly, annual), nutrition situation analysis and other reports.
• Support tracking of progress against national and global nutrition targets.

Innovation and Digital Solutions

• Support the use of digital solutions for real-time nutrition data collection.

System Strengthening

• Support integration of nutrition indicators into sectoral systems.
• Assist in harmonizing indicators across sectors aligned with national nutrition strategy.
• Explore interoperability solutions between systems (e.g., DHIS2, EMIS).

Coordination and Stakeholder Engagement

• Facilitate multi-sectoral coordination for nutrition data management.
• Collaborate with WB, ADB, WHO and other partners working on nutrition information systems
• Support the consolidation and analysis of multisectoral nutrition data for submission to the National Nutrition Committee.

If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Terms of Reference here:  Terms of Reference for Individual consultant_NIS internat