Вакансія: Communications Specialist – Consultant

1. Scope of work 

 The Local Health System Sustainability (LHSS) Ukraine Activity works to support the Government of Ukraine (GOU) efforts to mitigate corruption and strengthen governance of the health care system and increase access to essential services through digital solutions, responding to war-related needs. It does this with the aim of supporting the GOU to put in place the foundation for institutional arrangements and capacity to govern and ensure telemedicine is safely and sustainably offered to the population. The project has been supporting the rapid and rational scale up of telemedicine capacity in the context of the Russian full-scale invasion through several partnerships established in 2022, and helps the GOU integrate urgent telemedicine support investments into the health system.

Telemedicine services have grown rapidly in recent years because of the COVID-19 pandemic and, with the onset of Russia’s illegal invasion, have become an essential tool to maintain access to health care. However, the growth of telemedicine use had been primarily driven by the private sector. As a result, regulations around telemedicine services were fragmented, and governmental roles and responsibilities were unclear. Furthermore, amid the ongoing war, Ukraine received numerous external offers for telemedicine support outside of its own health system, but its capacity to review these offers had been limited. LHSS is expanding its support to address these emergent needs and supported the MOH in effectively managing these telemedicine support efforts; identifying priority services and populations to develop tailored approaches to increase access to care; expanding provider-to-provider telehealth in health care facilities; and documenting and assessing both relevant international experiences and the ongoing use of telemedicine in Ukraine for the benefit of Ukrainian health sector decision-makers.

Specific objectives of the LHSS Ukraine Activity are the following:

1. Strengthen telemedicine governance, policies, and financing
2. Restore availability and access of essential services using telemedicine 
3. Strengthen GOU capacity to respond to emergent war-related health conditions and interrupted access to health services

LHSS Ukraine seeks to hire a communications specialist to support development of social media communications plan and creation and dissemination of content through the social media platforms. In this position, the consultant will work closely with the LHSS Ukraine team based in Ukraine with guidance from the Chief of Party. Specifically, the consultant will:

Task 1: Support set up of social media accounts for the LHSS Ukraine activity and prepare a monthly communications calendar (content plan). The consultant will support LHSS Ukraine activity to create and maintain separate LHSS Ukraine social media accounts following the guidelines on separate that will be shared with the consultant upon hire and using login credentials provided by LHSS Ukraine activity. The consultant will create a communications plan for each month outlining when content will be posted on the social media and providing ideas as to the posts that can be shared. The consultant will draft posts with inputs from the technical team, select and edit photo materials suitable for publications, and schedule them to be published. The consultant will also respond to any comments and moderate the social media accounts.

Expected deliverables:

• Prepare a communications calendar for the following month by the 20^th of a current month.
• Publish at least 6 posts on each social media platform per month.
• Create an engagement matrix capturing different statistics like followers, likes, shares, comments, etc. and share with the Activity team monthly.

Tentative Dates and Estimated LOE:

• The tentative dates for this task are April 15, 2023 – September 30, 2023 
• Anticipated LOE: 18 days

Task 2: Create targeted social media campaigns. The consultant will work with the LHSS Ukraine activity to identify target audiences and create social media campaigns.

Expected deliverables:

• Create minimum 3 social media targeted campaigns.
• Following each campaign, create an engagement matrix capturing different statistics like followers, likes, shares, comments, etc.

Tentative Dates and Estimated LOE:

• The tentative dates for this task are April 15, 2023 – September 30, 2023 
• Anticipated LOE: 5 days

Task 3: Prepare content for newsletters. The consultant, in cooperation with the LHSS Ukraine Activity, will produce content for a monthly newsletter that will be shared with implementing partners. 

Expected deliverables:

• Create monthly newsletters and share them with the Project Management Specialist for dissemination.
• Following each newsletter campaign, create an engagement matrix capturing different statistics like how many new readers subscribed, how many unsubscribed, etc.

Tentative Dates and Estimated LOE:

• The tentative dates for this task are April 15, 2023 – September 30, 2023 
• Anticipated LOE: 6 days

Task 4: Prepare highlights to USAID Mission. The consultant will support the LHSS Ukraine activity to produce brief write-ups about recent project achievements to provide easily digestible information on the impact the team has made on a monthly basis. 

Expected deliverables:

• Prepare one USAID Mission highlight per month.

Tentative Dates and Estimated LOE:

• The tentative dates for this task are April 15, 2023 – September 30, 2023 
• Anticipated LOE: 6 days

 Task 5: Document lessons learned over the course of the project. The consultant, in cooperation with the LHSS Ukraine Activity, will describe lessons learnt and success stories that will be shared with the wide audience. .    

Expected deliverables:

• In cooperation with the team, to distinguish and describe at least 3 lessons learned and/ or success stories that worth to be publicly shared

Tentative Dates and Estimated LOE:

• The tentative dates for this task are April 15, 2023 – September 30, 2023 
• Anticipated LOE: 3 days   

Task 6: Complete a Short-Term Consultant Technical Assistance Report within final month of the consultancy. Template for report will be given within 30 days of consultancy start.

Expected Deliverables: 

• Short-term technical assistance report including all deliverables as attachments. 

Tentative Dates and Estimated LOE: 

• The tentative dates for this task are September 1, 2023 – January 30, 2023

• Anticipated LOE: up to 2 days  

2. Assumptions, Period of Performance, expected Level of Effort (LOE), reporting, minimum requirements, and travel 

Assumptions: This contract is dependent on the ability of government and development partner stakeholders to engage with LHSS Ukraine, given the ongoing war with Russia, any COVID-19-related restrictions, and the ability of USAID to obtain concurrence from the MOH to work with the activity.  

Reporting: The consultant will report to the LHSS Ukraine Chief of Party.  

Location: The consultant will initiate the work remotely. The team will consider travel needs on an ongoing basis and update this agreement if travel is agreed upon.  

Period of Performance: The consultant’s period of performance begins on April 15, 2023, and ends on September 30, 2023, for up to 40 days LOE. 

Minimum requirements: 

• At least 5 years of professional experience in communications, including at least 3 years of professional experience in managing Facebook accounts and Telegram channels
• A Bachelor’s degree in communications, linguistics, journalism, or any other related field
• Fluent in Ukrainian, intermediate level of English is a plus
• Exceptional writing, editing, and verbal communication skills. Ability to write effectively for a variety of different formats and for different audiences
• Experience drafting communications products for highly technical topic areas
• Ability to synthesize complex technical issues and data into language that is accessible and compelling to external audiences
• Familiarity with Photoshop, Canva or similar visual tools
• Careful, precise, attentive to details
• Able to meet tight deadlines and work under pressure
• Experience working on a USAID-funded project or in public health is a plus
• Previous experience in projects related to health systems strengthening, health governance, or health financing is desirable

Differently abled people are highly encouraged to apply. This includes people classified as “Persons with disabilities” according to the GOU. Please use the following link to apply: https://egpy.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/JoinAbt/job/103337.