USAID Health Learning-Sources Sought.pdf

SUBJECT: SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE

PROGRAM TITLE: USAID Health Learning

ISSUANCE DATE March 20, 2023

RESPONSE DUE DATE AND TIME: April 05, 2023, 9AM Nepal Time

SUBMISSION EMAIL: cghimire@usaid.gov mtelevantos@usaid.gov

Request for Information (RFI) No: RFI-367-23-00002

NAICS CODE: 541611 - Administrative Management and General

Management Consulting Services

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Nepal is currently planning a new activity, “USAID Health Learning,” to assist USAID/Nepal's Health Office and its implementing partners (IPs) in adopting rigorous and systematic monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) activities for adaptive activity management, and to advance broader organizational learning and development efforts. Interventions under the USAID Health

Learning activity will support the monitoring and evaluation of health activities that align with

USAID/Nepal’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) 2020-20251, particularly

Development Object Three, which aims to strengthen inclusive health and education systems.

Under this activity, a wide range of technical assistance will be provided to USAID/Nepal’s Health

Office, its IPs, and local MERL organizations. The areas of support will primarily focus on: design and implementation of surveys, assessments, and research; knowledge management; and MERL capacity building of USAID/Nepal Health Office supported local organizations and Government of

Nepal (GON) institutions to improve data management and use at the provincial and municipal levels. This activity will support and work with USAID/Nepal’s Health Office and its IPs, USAID/Nepal’s monitoring evaluation and learning contract, “USAID Learning for Development,” in coordination and collaboration with the respective Contracting /Agreement Officer’s

Representatives and Activity Managers.

Currently USAID/Nepal is funding more than 25 large and small scale health projects. USAID/Nepal health activities are implemented at the national level and in all seven provinces, covering 66 districts and over 500 municipalities. USAID/Nepal works with more than 900 public health facilities, and around 900 private sector health facilities (pharmacies, clinics, poly clinics and hospitals) across the country. The USAID Health Learning activity will be a multiple year effort to

1 https://www.usaid.gov/nepal/document/country-development-cooperation-strategy-cdcs-nepal-2020-2025 mailto:cghimire@usaid.gov mailto:mtelevantos@usaid.gov

Sources Sought Notification USAID Health Learning activity achieve the following interlinked objectives:

1. Program monitoring and assessment: Support to carry out annual and periodic surveys, assessments, and special studies to provide high quality data for program and systems planning and implementation. Illustrative tasks include:

1.1 Household surveys: Conduct annual surveys to provide aggregate population level indicator estimates with a focus on nutrition, maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH), family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH), water sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and select infectious diseases and in line with the indicator matrices and Activity Monitoring and Evaluation Plans of USAID/Nepal health activities. Surveys will be implemented in

USAID/Nepal supported geographies, and are intended to provide annual data to track program inputs, outputs, and outcomes to assess changes over time and within the life of the benefiting activities. These surveys must be implemented mobilizing subnational level local organizations and individuals and the key survey findings must be disaggregated by various population characteristics such as: age, sex, wealth quintiles, caste/ethnicity, and education as applicable.

1.2 Client satisfaction surveys: Conduct annual surveys to measure client satisfaction with the health care services supported by USAID/Nepal’s Health Office, covering priority project communities and municipalities. The survey tools will include indicators being tracked by health activities.

1.3 Health facility rapid assessments: Conduct biennial rapid health facility assessments to monitor track key service readiness indicators tracked by USAID/Nepal’s Health Office and select activities. The health facility assessment tool will include Geographic Information

System mapping and geo-tagging of all health facilities.

1.4 Municipal/provincial health systems capacity assessments: Support the planned

USAID Health System Strengthening activity and USAID Integrated Nutrition activity to conduct annual health systems capacity assessments of local governments in select intervention areas. Support a health systems capacity assessment with other GON entities as needed. This activity will review the existing municipal health systems capacity assessment tools and standardize them for provinces, municipalities and USAID/Nepal’s use.

1.5 Organizational capacity assessment of local organizations: Conduct organizational capacity assessments of local organizations and local consortium partners working with various activities including the planned: USAID Integrated Nutrition activity, USAID Health

System Strengthening activity, and USAID Mass Communications activity to identify management, administrative, financial, and technical capacity gaps. Support the development of action plans to address gaps identified in the assessments, and follow-up action plan implementation. In coordination with the USAID/Nepal MERL contract, “USAID

Learning for Development,” this activity will customize the existing Organizational Capacity

Assessment Tools for use by USAID/Nepal health IPs.

1.6 Other studies and assessments: Conduct various studies and assessments to supplement baseline, midline, and endline data on USAID/Nepal’s Health Office activities.

The assessments will cover USAID/Nepal’s health program areas of: nutrition, MNCH, FP/RH, WASH, physical rehabilitation, infectious diseases, and health systems strengthening. Qualitative and quantitative methods, including formative research, client exit interviews, mystery clients, focus groups and observation, will be used to contribute to program performance monitoring and progress tracking.

2) Knowledge management: Knowledge management activities to harness, organize, and disseminate the knowledge gained from MERL, will be used to institutionalize information for use across USAID/Nepal health activities, IPs , GON offices, and global community. Produce reports and translate them in Nepali language, or local dialects, as needed. Illustrative tasks under the knowledge management component include:

2.1 Further and deep-dive analysis: Support USAID/Nepal’s Health Office, its IPs and GON at the national, provincial, and municipal levels to conduct secondary analysis and deep dive analysis of the survey/assessment data collected by this activity and develop visualizations and presentations for dissemination and sharing and use in policy, guidelines and service delivery decision-making. Develop documents for local stakeholders to easily digest and utilize in operations.

2.2 Collaborating, learning and adapting (CLA): Conduct, facilitate, and/or arrange logistics and other support for CLA events such as meetings, USAID/Nepal staff field visits, joint field visits with GON, study tours for GON officials in select areas etc. Using the data collected under this activity and other data available in Nepal, organize small scale learning sessions at sub-national levels to optimize utilization of data.

2.3 Planning and review of the government-to-government USAID Health Direct

Financing Project: Support annual program reviews and planning workshops with federal, provincial and local governments. Support USAID/Nepal’s Health Office to organize periodic review meetings, joint field visits, to monitor indicators by extracting data from the Ministry of Health and Population’s (MOHP) Health Management Information System

(HMIS) and Logistics Management Information System (LMIS), and help develop and administer stakeholder feedback tools.

2.4 Secondary analysis of national level surveys: Support secondary analysis of national level surveys supported by USAID/Nepal or other external organizations such as the Nepal

Health Facility Surveys, Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys, Nepal Multiple Indicators

Cluster Surveys, National Female Community Health Volunteer Surveys, etc., primarily to provide evidence for sub-national governments, USAID, and its IPs in programmatic decision-making. Produce reports and translate them in Nepali language, or local dialects, as needed.

3) Capacity development: Ensure MERL capacity development among USAID/Nepal’s health local

IPs and select GON organizations in Nepal, consistent with USAID/Nepal’s CDCS 2020-2025 and localization policies. Illustrative tasks include:

3.1 MERL needs assessment and capacity building: Conduct needs assessments of MERL capacity gaps consistent with the objectives and deliverables of the award among USAID

Health Office’s local partners and those of its activities. Based on the identified capacity gaps, strengthen the MERL capacity of local firms.

3.2 Health research ethics: Support USAID/Nepal to improve ethical practices in health research design and implementation. In coordination with the GON’s Nepal Health

Research Council, organize events to strengthen ethical review practices across health research supported by USAID/Nepal.

3.3 Data analysis and use: Organize events to build the capacity of the GON’s provincial and local governments to analyze, visualize, interpret, and use the data collected by this activity. This includes providing skills on use of statistical software.

To build local capacity within Nepal to carry out MERL and knowledge management activities, the activity is expected to work with Nepali entities (USAID/Nepal health IPs, individuals, academic institutions, think tanks, sub-contractors, and government counterparts), and the USAID Learning for Development activity to the extent possible, while maintaining proper management and oversight of its core objectives.

This is a Sources Sought Notice to identify qualified local entities, to include Nepalese for-profit and nonprofit organizations as defined in Attachment B - Eligibility Requirements, that are interested in and capable of performing the work described above. Your responses to the information requested will serve as market research to assist USAID in planning the procurement strategy and will not be released publicly.

Submission instructions for this Sources Sought Notice are provided in Attachment A.

USAID/Nepal is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information, answer questions, or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. Please note issuance of this Sources Sought Notice does not constitute an award commitment on the part of the U.S. Government, and in accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses are not considered offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Do not submit pricing information in response to this Sources Sought. All costs associated with responding to this

Sources Sought will be solely at the interested party’s expense. Not responding to this Sources

Sought does not preclude participation in any future solicitation, if any are issued.

Organizations are encouraged to review the following website to learn more about working with

USAID: https://www.workwithusaid.org/. Thank you for your assistance and interest in USAID programs.

Sincerely, Maria Televantos

Contracting Officer https://www.workwithusaid.org/

ATTACHMENT A - SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

USAID/Nepal requests the following information only from interested and qualified local organizations (see Attachment B). Please submit responses via email mentioned in the cover page of this notice using the following subject title: “Sources Sought: USAID Health Learning”.

1. Organization Name

2. Point of contact name and contact email/phone

3. Unique Entity Identification (UEI) Number

4. Legal registration status in Nepal

5. Statement of capabilities, including technical and staffing resources and an organizational chart, describing your organization’s ability to execute the proposed objectives listed on Page

1 (2 pages maximum).

6. One-page table that contains a list of up to five past or current projects/activities that details your organization’s experience of performing efforts of similar size, scope, and complexity as the requirements detailed in the attached draft SOW (Attachment A). Sample format below: (1 page maximum).

Name of Activity Country Years (From - To) Dollar Value of the activity

Brief Description

7. Confirm whether your organization can meet all the objectives described above. If not, please provide details on how you would identify a consortium of partners or target hiring of specialized staff to meet these objectives (1 page maximum).

8. Any additional information on experience working in health specific research, assessments, capacity building, and knowledge management in the past five years, if not covered in point 6 above. This can include working with/for other donors; UN and other multilateral organizations; federal, provincial, and local governments; academia; GON organizations such as the National Statistics Office and the Nepal Health Research Council (1 page maximum).

All proprietary information should be marked as such. Responses will be reviewed only by USAID personnel and will be held in a confidential manner. No electronic confirmation acknowledging receipt of your response nor individualized feedback on any suggestions will be given. No basis for claims against the U.S. Government shall arise as a result of a response to this Sources Sought

Notice or from the Government’s use of such information. Specific questions about this Sources

Sought Notice should be directed only to the email address identified above.

ATTACHMENT B - ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

A. Must be local actors in Nepal. When determining if an entity is a “local actor” for the purposes of this Sources Sought:

1. Entity is legally organized under the laws of Nepal;

2. Entity has its principal place of business or operations in Nepal;

3. Entity is majority owned and controlled by individuals who are citizens or lawful permanent residents of Nepal;

4. Entity is managed by a governing body, the majority of whom are citizens or lawful permanent residents of Nepal; and

5. If entity has projects, offices, and/or registration in other countries, key management decisions are taken by the office located in Nepal.

B. Cannot be a United States-based organization.

[END OF SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE]