A11_Request for Information.docx

THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION FOR PROPOSALS

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY

This Request for Information (RFI) is for the purpose of identifying vendors that can meet the following Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Requirements.

Description of Requirement The CDC has a requirement for a technical service contract the purpose of which is to obtain technical expertise and support for the Division of Global Health Protection’s Health Systems Strengthening Activities to develop training materials for two tracks of frontline healthcare engaged in diseases detection to better understand and apply case definitions of priority diseases reported under International Health regulation (IHR) in order to expedite the reporting of the disease from health facility to relevant public health authorities.

These two tracks are clinical staff (including nurses, midwives, Doctors, etc.) and community health workers. The trainings shall be delivered using the Project Echo model and should be formatted appropriately. These trainings may also be delivered in areas with low internet capabilities and should be designed and formatted appropriately. These training materials will be piloted in Cameroon and feedback or requested edits from this pilot will be incorporated into the final version of these materials. Once the final versions of the training and assessments are complete, all materials shall be translated into French.

Table of Requirements

DGHP Project Team Staff

DGHP Project Team Staff

DGHP Project Team Staff

DGHP Project Team Staff

DGHP Project Team Staff

This RFI is not to be considered as a request for proposal or as an obligation on the part of the Government to acquire any products or services. No entitlement to payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by the Government will arise as a result of the contractor submission to this Sources Sought or the Government's use of such information. The Government reserves the right to reject, in whole or in part, any contractor's input resulting from this RFI. No contract will be awarded as a result of this announcement.

Data submitted in response to this RFI will not be returned.

· Period of Performance: 09/25/2024 – 09/24/2025

· Place of Performance: Cameroon

INSTRUCTION FOR SUBMISSION

After review of the attached documentation, interested parties may submit a response in an electronic format only via email to [Contract Officer - Spencer Kahn] at [email: qnt8@cdc.gov] no later than July 2, 2024, 4:00 EST. Electronic files should be in Microsoft Office Word or PDF format. All information should be UNCLASSIFIED material only.

Respondents should include as part of their submission:

· Capabilities statement.

· GSA Number if applicable

· SAM Unique Entity ID Number

· Firm Name

· Firm Address

· Business size, SDVOSB, HUBZone, or Woman owned status, as validated via

· the System for Award Management (SAM) website. All offers must be

· registered in SAM at http://www.SAM.gov

· Firm’s point of contact, phone and email address.

· A schedule that shows the ability to meet the provided in the requirements document below.

Any proprietary information must be marked as such, the RFI information should not exceed a total of 10 one-sided 8 1/2x11 pages, with one-inch margins, and font no smaller than 12 point.

PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT

Title: Support to Develop Training Materials to Strengthen Frontline Healthcare Worker Capacity to Use and Apply Disease Case Definitions

SECTION 1 – BACKGROUND

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works around the clock to protect people from health, safety and security threats, both in the US and internationally. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same. CDC put science and advanced technology into action to prevent disease; develop leaders and train the public health workforce, including disease detective.

Countries require resilient health systems that provide routine health services to address both endemic and emerging health threats. The frontline health workforce is a backbone to health systems; they play a vital role in maintaining essential services, detecting communicable and noncommunicable diseases, and improving population health outcomes. Frontline health workers at the clinic and community level require support through ongoing training and opportunities to interact with other healthcare professionals to improve self-efficacy and competency.

In many countries, disease surveillance is uncoordinated and often misses information from communities in remote rural areas. Inadequate surveillance can cause delayed detection of priority diseases, increasing the risk of pandemics. These gaps highlight the imperative of strengthening existing frontline health workers’ knowledge, capacity, and skillsets and improving efficiencies of surveillance systems to report diagnosed or suspected priority diseases in order to meet the 7-1-7 goals for epidemic preparedness. This goal specifies that health systems should detect suspected infectious disease outbreaks within 7 days, notify public health authorities to start an investigation in 1 day, and complete an initial response within 7 days. To reach the first 7 (detect suspected infectious disease outbreaks within 7 days), countries must improve the capacity of frontline healthcare workers to recognize possible cases of priority infectious diseases by better understanding and applying the case definitions of these diseases. Capacity strengthening for health workers is widely known as a strategy for improving health worker performance, for strengthening health systems, and for overall quality improvement in the delivery of health services globally. Capacity strengthening of health workforce can be achieved through continuous education and training. Interprofessional training improves clinical outcomes, reduces medical errors, increases patient satisfaction, and decreases provider burnout.

The Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) training model offers the potential to overcome barriers to accessing continuous education for healthcare workers (e.g., doctors, nurses, midwives, community health workers) by allowing engagement with other healthcare professionals and enabling professional development. This model of knowledge sharing has been shown to improve access to specialty care and improved patient outcomes in many community settings. Since the ECHO model’s initial uptake within the healthcare sector, it has grown to over 700 licensed organizations globally across 55 countries to include an increasing variety of health, education, and civic applications. ECHO’s strength lies in its simplicity, adaptability, and access to subject matter experts to increase capacity of primary care providers in underserviced, rural, and remote communities.

In addition to CDC headquarters support, partnership and collaboration are key to conducing a successful project ECHO. Through identification of key partners, collaboration with subject matter expert (SME) presenters, skilled facilitation of the ECHO training sessions, needed enhancements in surveillance and reporting systems, and establishment of a system of monitoring and evaluation there will be an increase in the number of frontline healthcare workers with improved knowledge, attitude, skillsets, and confidence needed to produce quality care and advance in support of achieving 7-1-7 targets.

SECTION 2 – PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE

The purpose of the acquisition is to obtain technical expertise and support for the Division of Global Health Protection’s Health Systems Strengthening Activities to develop training materials for two tracks of frontline healthcare to better understand and apply case definitions of priority diseases reported under International Health regulation (IHR) in order to expedite recognizing, diagnosing, and reporting of the disease from health facility to relevant public health authorities. These two tracks are clinical staff (including nurses, midwives, Doctors, etc.) and community health workers. The trainings shall be delivered using the Project Echo model and should be formatted appropriately. These trainings may also be delivered in areas with low internet capabilities and should be designed and formatted appropriately. These training materials will be reviewed by subject matter experts and feedback or requested edits will be incorporated into the final version of these materials. Once the final versions of the training and assessments are complete, some materials shall be translated into Spanish and Francophone African French, as appropriate to their geographical occurrence and as detailed below.

SECTION 3 – SCOPE OF WORK

The contractor, as an independent organization and not an agent of the Government, shall develop two tracks of training materials formatted appropriately to be used as part of the Project Echo training model to educate and train clinical staff and community health workers to correctly understand and apply case definitions for eleven priority diseases. The contractor shall further develop pre- and post-training assessments for the purpose of determining what was learned from the trainings and shall develop a feedback form for the pilot training which will be used by the pilot training facilitator to gather requested feedback and edits to the training materials. Once finalized, some training materials and pre- and post-training assessments shall be translated into Francophone African French and/or Spanish. English versions of these materials, as well as the Francophone African French and Spanish translations of specified materials, shall be delivered at the conclusion of the project.

The contractor shall provide subject matter expertise on the most effective, evidence-based methods to format, write, or otherwise convey the material that DGHP specifies should be included in the training. These recommendations should be appropriate for each group of learners (one set of recommendations for clinical staff and one set of recommendations for community health workers) and reflect roles and responsibilities assumed by each group and appropriate for settings with low internet availability. These recommendations shall be provided to DGHP in writing and shall be discussed verbally in meetings. The contractor shall discuss with DGHP how best to incorporate these recommendations into the trainings and shall implement decisions and directives made by DGHP based on these discussions into the training drafts.

Upon execution of this contract, CDC and the contractor will decide on a date for a kick-off meeting (within 14 days of contract award). The contractor will take notes and provide meeting minutes from the kick-off meeting. The contractor will have monthly meetings with the COR. In advance of the monthly meetings, the monthly report will be provided by the contractor. These monthly reports shall include, but not limited to, progress on each of the tasks referenced and after-action reports. The final report will be a compilation of the monthly reports giving particular attention to what was accomplished during the life of the contract.

SECTION 4 – TASKS TO BE PERFORMED

The Contractor, as an independent organization and not an agent of the Government shall furnish all labor, equipment (beyond that listed in Section 5), materials, supplies, and other direct and indirect costs required to provide on and off-site technical support for the following tasks:

Contractors will be required to use secure CDC IT systems to complete work such as working over VPN, through CITGO, or accessing programs via M365 tools.

Task 1: Contractor shall develop training materials in English suitable for instances of low internet availability based on standard medical and community health worker case definitions for understanding case definitions in general and for case definitions for 11 communicable diseases following DGHP guidelines to ensure materials are consistent with those already developed. The materials are to be used in a Project ECHO setting.

Task 2: Contractor shall provide subject matter expertise on the most effective, evidence-based methods and tools to achieve specific learning goals.

Task 3: Contractor shall use clinical information and recommendations from DGHP to design and produce training materials in English for two training tracks (clinical staff and community health workers), each covering 11, for a total of 22 modules:

(a) Standard case definitions provided by CDC and application of the definitions in practice for 11 diseases: Measles, Dengue Fever, Plague, Chikungunya, Malaria, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), Rabies, Influenza, Zika, and Botulism. Topics covered for each disease will include: symptoms, epidemiological linkages, labs as appropriate to the user context, how the case definition should be applied in practice, case scenarios illustrating how to use case definitions for efficient identification and reporting of diseases, and prompts for an open discussion of the learners’ experiences with these symptoms, diseases, and common misapplications.

1. Contractor shall work with clinical experts from DGHP to review the training material design. Incorporate feedback and needed changes to the design on an ongoing basis as specified during reviews.

Task 4: Contractor shall develop two versions of the pre- and post-training assessments in English for the training modules to assess the knowledge learners gained from participating in the training. One version of the pre- and post-training assessments shall be for clinical staff and the other version of the assessments shall be for community health workers.

Task 5: The materials relating to Measles, Dengue Fever, Plague Chikungunya, Malaria, and Rabies shall be translated into Francophone African French.

Task 6: The materials relating to Measles, Dengue, Plague, Chikungunya, Influenza, and Zika shall be translated into Spanish. Additionally, previously developed materials relating to Yellow Fever, Cholera, and Covid-19 shall also be translated into Spanish.

SECTION 5 – GOVERNMENT FURNISHED PROPERTY

The following Government Furnished Equipment is available for contractors’ use, as applicable: CDC issued Laptop computer, MS Lync headset device.

Contractors will be required to use secure CDC IT systems to complete work such as working over VPN, through CITGO, or accessing programs via M365 tools.

SECTION 6 – PLACE OF PERFORMANCE AND CONTRACT SUPPORT HOURS

SUBSECTION A – PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

Duties may be performed off- site, contractors are permitted to remote work and telework with prior approval from vendor and CDC in accordance with CDC’s Workplace Flexibilities Program (WFP).

SUBSECTION B – CONTRACT SUPPORT HOURS

No specific hours are required.

SECTION 7 – TRAVEL

Travel shall not be required.