75N91023R00033-_Attach_1-_SOW_1.pdf

Statement of Work

Project Title: NCI Center for Global Health, Coordination, Data Analysis and Technical Support

The purpose of this contract is to provide support for the National Cancer lnstitute's (NCI) Center for Global Health (CGH) activities in the following areas:

Technical support for CGH research, coordination, and evaluation activities (Task Area 1).

Data and portfolio analysis, and production of accompanying reports (Task Area 2).

Science and technical writing, presentations, and documentation support (Task Area 3).

Background:

The Center for Global Health (CGH) supports NCI's mission to improve cancer control worldwide. CGH contributes by advancing global cancer research and training and coordinating NCI engagement in global cancer control. CGH also represents NCI in international research partnerships, playing a key role in coordinating multinational research efforts for global benefit.

The CGH vision is to reduce worldwide cancer suffering through global scientific discovery and dissemination. Two fundamental beliefs underlie this vision. First, current tools for achieving global cancer control are inadequate and new discoveries are needed. Second, existing tools for achieving global cancer control have been incompletely applied and greater population-level dissemination is needed.

CGH’s core values are impact, equity, and collaboration. These values inform CGH efforts to lead innovative programs with partners within and outside of NCI. The goals for these programs focus on research, research training, dissemination, and partnership, primarily in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

CGH goals primarily focus on LMIC settings for CGH-led programs:

1. Support innovative, impactful research that (a) addresses key scientific issues in global cancer control and/or (b) leverages unique or unusual scientific opportunities afforded by collaboration with global partners

2. Support cancer research training that enables equitable, impactful global scientific collaboration

3. Promote the integration of current scientific knowledge into global cancer control policies and practice

4. Represent NCI and promote its engagement with key partners in global cancer research and control

CGH engages in multiple research, training, and dissemination activities with international partners. To respond to the broad mandate given to the NCI and to fulfill its own mission, CGH is in need of technical support and coordination for research initiatives; program evaluation to determine the merit of training and other international programs; data and portfolio analyses to address timely research questions with available data and assess investment in different relevant research areas; and preparation of documents to disseminate information about research programs, global cancer control activities, and evaluation results and analyses.

CGH leads multiple extramural initiatives in implementation science (IS) for cancer control in LMICs, along with in-house research initiatives and related activities. These new initiatives also make use of cooperative agreement mechanisms with the intent that CGH will have substantial involvement in the scientific activities conducted by grantees. In particular, given that global cancer implementation science remains at a relatively early stage of development, grantees working in this area will benefit greatly from sharing methods, measures, and solutions as they build their research programs. To facilitate this collaboration, CGH is creating a consortium across grantees to maximize NCI’s investment across these multiple initiatives. Support is needed to enable collaboration across funded projects and initiatives in the consortium, as well as linking to other NCI and National Institutes of Health (NIH) IS initiatives.

Technical Requirements:

Independently, and not as an agent of the Government, the contractor shall furnish all the necessary services, qualified personnel, material, equipment, and facilities, not otherwise provided by the Government as needed to perform activities in the Statement of Work (SOW).

At times, the activities in this SOW may be needed at a rapid response pace (e.g., unforeseen circumstances in either international or domestic settings that require immediate attention) In these cases, a contractor may be asked to provide support outside of normal business hours, however, these occurrences are very rare. The normal hours of performance are CGH core hours of 8:00am-5:00pm ET.

Contractor Tasks:

The contractor shall perform the following services, as specified in the individual task order.

Task 1: Technical support for CGH research, coordination, and evaluation activities

The contractor shall provide the ability to support collaborative research consortium activities across CGH initiatives; evaluate research activities qualitatively and quantitatively; support trans-program coordination; and process and/or outcome evaluation of CGH programs. The support includes, but is not limited to: coordination activities for CGH research initiatives;

coordination of working groups and steering committees for extramural initiatives;

development of research project frameworks and evaluations; management of content and organization of online resources for research collaboration; conduct focus groups; qualitative and quantitative data analysis; survey design; key informant interviews; and the conduct and reporting of outcomes (e.g. presentations, reports, manuscripts).

Sometimes this work is needed at a rapid response pace. In these cases, a contractor may be asked to provide support outside of normal business hours; however, these occurrences are very rare (e.g., the contractor or the Point of Contact (POC) for the Task Order (TO) may need to provide clarification at a step in the process of the SOW and requires a quick turnaround response or data review). The contractor will coordinate with the CGH Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR), CGH Leadership, and staff to provide support for research and evaluation tasks. The list below includes examples, but is not exclusive of additional research and evaluation related and reporting assistance that may be requested:

• Support CGH staff and research initiatives by providing logistical and communications support for consortium activities involving international and domestic extramural grantees and other partners, including working groups and online collaboration tools.

Examples of tasks may include but are not limited to the following:

1. Support for communication and coordination between NCI and international and domestic extramural Centers and awardees, consortium steering committee, and working groups including regular video conference calls, management of group email communications, and facilitating community engagement.

2. Work with NCI IT staff to develop, organize, populate, and maintain a Government-owned resource sharing and communication platform for grantees to support collaboration and sharing of protocols, survey instruments, methodological documentation, and datasets. Work with NCI to establish and manage processes to share data and disseminate findings to the research community and other stakeholders, including development of data use agreements.

3. Work with NCI and grantees on identification of common data elements and facilitate standardization and harmonization of data where appropriate.

• Support the CGH staff by providing timely, quality qualitative and quantitative evaluation research services using established and innovative methods that are appropriate to the research questions, timely, and cost effective in obtaining the primary or secondary data necessary to provide answers to the research questions. The contractor shall obtain CGH staff approval of the methodology for research projects prior to the work being initiated. Examples of evaluation tasks may include, but are not limited to:

1. Review relevant scholarly literature to aid in qualitative and quantitative research design.

2. Design qualitative and quantitative analyses, consistent with addressing the questions posed. These may include: bibliometrics, network analysis, surveys, interviews, secondary analysis of preexisting datasets, document analysis, and other approaches. Designs will include methods, sampling frame, sampling approach, data collection approach, and data analysis approach.

3. Construct data collection tools such as surveys (including development of new items and scales, as well as use of existing items and scales), interview guides for key informant interviews (KIIs), and qualitative data analysis codebooks.

4. Conduct cognitive testing, as needed, to revise survey instruments and interview guides.

5. Develop Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Institutional Review Board (IRB) packages, as needed, with guidance from CGH.

6. Design web-based surveys instruments and data collection methodology and tool, using NCI-approved systems.

7. Implement studies, including sampling, recruitment, and data collection via focus groups or key informant interviews (KIIs) or surveys.

8. Clean data and provide databases and codebooks to NCI.

9. Analyze both qualitative and quantitative data and develop initial and final reports of findings, including tables, graphs and figures and text summaries of findings.

10. Collaborate with CGH staff to develop reports, including writing sections of reports, presentation slides, and manuscripts. These may be posted publicly on the CGH webpage.

11. Explore converging approaches to assessing the impact or return on investment of

NCI-sponsored research in global health.

• Analyze and assess the effectiveness/productivity of initiatives/programs/projects supported by CGH, including evaluation of management and technical strengths and weaknesses; recommendations for improvement; and a summary of the degree of success in meeting metrics, objectives, and schedules.

All data and related materials developed, delivered, administered, collected, acquired, or accrued as a result of an NCI-related evaluation activity shall be provided to the COR within seven (7) business days of completion of the individual evaluation, unless otherwise specified in the individual task order. The COR will determine where and how the data or evaluation results are presented or disseminated. Authorship shall be determined in conjunction with CGH staff.

Task 2: Data and portfolio analysis, and production of accompanying reports

The contractor shall conduct qualitative and quantitative analyses from existing datasets.

Activities may include secondary data analysis from global data sources, analysis of global grant portfolio data, literature reviews, and bibliometric analysis. Tasks may include, but are not limited to:

• Extracting data from NCI systems (Query/View/Report (QVR), NIH Reporter, World Report, International Cancer Research Portfolio (ICRP), etc.).

• Applying protocols for data cleaning and organization, including creating country level variables for global projects

• Use of Excel, Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) and other software systems for data analysis.

• Conduct descriptive analyses including trends over time and multivariate analysis of applications and funded awards to address programmatic questions.

• Conduct text mining of application abstracts, specific aims, and/or publications to characterize research activity areas.

• Conduct literature reviews and bibliometric analyses of publication data extracted from PubMed or other biomedical literature database. Perform bibliometric analyses of publication data using iCite, or other bibliometric analysis software tools, as directed by NCI to inform programmatic activities.

• Preparing formatted data reports with accompanying narratives and graphics, including network diagrams, maps to show geographic location of activities, timelines, and graphs and charts to illustrate results.

Data analysis requests will be on an ad-hoc basis and are estimated to be in the range of 10-20 reports per year and will vary in scope.

The contractor shall provide to the COR the following related to global cancer investments at CGH, NCI and NIH, across other agencies of the US Government, and other data sources as determined by CGH: 1) data reports retrieved from relevant NIH/NCI data sources including, but not limited to, QVR, NIH Reporter and others (system access will be provided, as necessary), and 2) data synthesis, analysis, recommendations, and narrative to accompany data and grant portfolio assessments. The contractor shall prepare include graphic representations (pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs, etc.) of the lnstitute's research portfolio and written analysis narrative as required by CGH. Portfolio analyses may require keyword text searches, project abstract review, and coding to a specific framework, which may need to be developed. The contractor shall have familiarity with tools such as QVR and Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT). The contractor shall provide the reports and graphs, as needed, within an agreed upon time period specified by the CGH COR.

The contractor shall prepare all documents intended for Web site posting to meet all Section 508 accessibility requirements, as described elsewhere in this SOW.

Task 3: Science and technical writing, presentations, and documentation support

CGH produces a variety of documents and publications each year, targeted at a number of audiences (most frequently scientists, public health professionals, advocates, international partners, NCI leadership, Congress, and the American public). The contractor shall provide scientific and technical writing support, preparation and design of publications, and presentation materials to be disseminated through NCI prepared documents, NCI publications, and CGH Web site content and presentations. CGH estimates the volume of these requests to be approximately 20-30 per year with varying levels of scope. Clearance shall be obtained from the Public Affairs office, as appropriate, prior to release.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

1. CGH biennial report

2. Summary of NIH global funding opportunities

3. Quarterly PDF newsletter for global implementation science grantees

4. Design elements including graphics and presentation materials to support grantee consortium activities.

5. Developing content and materials for a public website to support CGH extramural research programs and consortia and disseminate key products (using NCI provided platform).

6. Prepare presentations summarizing data on research initiatives and portfolio

7. Editing and writing support for scientific publications

The following section is applicable, as specified on individual task orders. The contractor shall support the transitions "in" for any ongoing tasks and transitions "out" of any activities, as appropriate.

TASK ORDER REQUIREMENTS

After each task order initiation, the contractor shall provide monthly updates to the COR and any relevant CGH program staff as delegated by the COR by teleconference on a COR approved platform. The updates shall include discussion of the task order status, any issues in the progress of the task order and next steps. Material to be discussed during the monthly update shall be delivered by email from the Contractor to the COR, no later than 48 hours in advance of the meetings. Materials include but are not limited to: Status updates for the task order; a meeting tracker (as applicable); and travel documentation (as applicable Excel spreadsheet that itemizes the meetings supported and the travelers supported - format to be specified by the CGH COR and provided as part of the Task Order Request for Proposal).

Travel may be required by the Contractor, if travel is required it will be identified within the task order. On occasion, the contractor will be required to be on site at CGH, as requested, for an individual task order activity. Notice of these onsite requirements will be provided with at least a 48- hour advanced notice, as noted in the individual Task Orders.

TRANSITION IN

As specified in an individual task order, the contractor shall submit a proposal that will support transfer of ongoing activities and products from NCI and establish an acceptable schedule for any "transition in" activities.

TRANSITION OUT

As specified on the individual task order, the contractor shall be responsible for preparing and submitting a "Transition Out Plan" to the COR sixty (60) calendar days prior to completion of the task order. For each task order, the contractor shall work with the COR to finalize the "Transition Out Plan" for transfer of ongoing activities and products to NCI and to establish an acceptable schedule.

As applicable to each individual task order, the Transition Out Plan shall include:

1. Data Management: Outline any remaining data issues for the evaluations and technical documentation that is ongoing and to be completed by the end of the period of performance.

2. Document Management: Inventory of the documents, data sets, evaluations, web documents and analyses, conference/meeting/workshop/training documentation created by the contractor for the task order and any Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) followed in the creation of the documents.

3. A meeting tracker and travel documentation (as applicable): Excel spreadsheet that itemizes the meetings supported and the travelers supported (format to be specified by the CGH COR).

The contractor shall submit all deliverables in accordance with the contract and/or task order schedule. The contractor shall also obtain all required clearances and adhere to policies and procedures for all work accomplished under this contract, including but not limited to: Information Security requirements (e.g., Federal Information Security Management Act, Federal Information Processing Standard), Section 508 requirements, Public Affairs clearance, and Printing policies.

Reporting Requirements and Deliverables (for the RFP)

All electronic reports or documents (and other Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products and services) submitted shall be conformant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Additional information about formatting and testing documents for Section 508 compliance, including guidance and specific checklists, by application, can be found at: Accessibility @ HHS | HHS.gov (https://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/index.html) under “Accessibility Training Resources” and “Accessibility Compliance Checklists”. Applicable standards can be found at Electronic Documents. Additional guidance can be found at Create Accessible Digital Products | Section508.gov.

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