International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc.
About Us
International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc. (IBTCI), a U.S. based international development consulting company established in 1987, has worked in over 100 countries and implemented over 300 projects. IBTCI serves government agencies, private sector companies, and several donor agencies. IBTCI specializes in monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) and institutional support across many areas and sectors including, but not limited to, conflict and crisis, democracy and governance, agriculture, economic growth, food security, education, environment, and global health.
Job Title: Senior Social Behavioral Change Advisor (PEPFAR/OVC/Adolescent) – Local Nationals Only
Department/Location: USAID/India
Reports To: ISPI Project Manager
Type: Regular Full-Time
Classification: Senior Level Advisor
Clearance Required: Facilities Access
Overview:
International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc. (IBTCI), a U.S. based international development consulting company established in 1987, has worked in over one hundred countries and implemented over three hundred projects. IBTCI serves government agencies, private sector companies and several donor agencies. IBTCI specializes in institutional support and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) across many sectors including, but not limited to, conflict and crisis, democracy and governance, economic growth, education, environment, and global health.
The Global Health Training, Advisory and Support Contract (GHTASC) delivers effective global health programming to advance the mission of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Bureau for Global Health (GH) through institutional support and workforce development services from junior, mid-level, senior and expert advisory and administrative professionals.
Responsibilities
Position Summary
USAID/India Health Office (HO) manages a vast and diverse portfolio of programs that are aligned with the Government of India’s (GOI) Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A) goals, the national TB goal to increase detection and treatment success rates, and the National AIDS Control Program to achieve epidemic control by 2030, and emergency response to COVID-19 as well as building resilient health systems. The health portfolio’s overall objectives are driven by an inclusive development agenda. USAID’s overarching approach in India is to work as partners with the GOI, demonstrating and evaluating scalable models that shape India’s healthcare system to effectively respond to the needs of the poor and vulnerable. Through these relationships, USAID/India serves as the GOI’s “innovation lab partner,” demonstrating and evaluating high-impact solutions to India’s most complex health challenges, and then working with the GOI to scale them up across the country.
Social and behavior change (SBC), along with behavioral research and evaluation approaches, are essential ingredients to changing attitudes, perceptions, and practices to ensure the success of key health interventions. SBC plays a critical role in supporting the health care service delivery to achieve USAID/India’s health office goals. The Senior Social Behavior Change Advisor (Senior Advisor) will be responsible for providing overall technical assistance for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of SBC strategies across USAID/India portfolio as well as coordinating with and building the capacity of Government of India (GOI) and implementing partners. The Senior Advisor will ensure the utilization of best practices and global learning to inform the development of effective SBC strategies, frameworks, tools etc. The Senior Advisor will partner with GOI, private sector, local and national organizations, UN organizations and civil society for coordination and exploring synergies and partnership opportunities for SBC. The Advisor will also guide ongoing M&E for health communication programs. Key for this position’s success will be the ability to apply Behavior change concepts and approaches to the wide variety of programs across the USAID portfolio including RMNCHA, TB, HIV and COVID-19. The position requires in-country travel to communities throughout India.
Essential Duties/Tasks and Responsibilities:
- Outcome 1: Set a distinctive strategic vision for Behaviour Change for USAID/India, integrating behavioral insights into its programming and partnerships.
- As a thought leader ensure that USAID/India programs integrate new methods and approaches and reflect latest evidence, best practices, emerging priorities and trends in the field of behavioral sciences.
- Provide leadership in the design, integration, institutionalization, and quality assurance of Behavior Change across programs in the portfolio.
- Build capacity of USAID staff and implementing partners in best and emerging practices in Behavior Sciences for example human centered design, using digital/social media, social media listening, behavioral economics, the development of social norms, building social movements (Jan Andolan), systems and design thinking, and measuring impact of Behaviour Change interventions.
- Contribute to the planning and implementation of public health outreach and education programs and events, including high-level visits for GOI and USG staff.
- Review existing programs across MH, CH, HIV, TB and HSS and identify intervention areas that lend themselves to a more structured SBC approach that can further enhance the effectiveness of these interventions.
- Outcome 2: Strengthen the technical leadership of social behavior change efforts within the public health interventions supported by USAID/India Health Office programming.
- Provide strategic vision and leadership to support the GOI’s efforts on COVID-19 related risk communications and community engagement (RCCE) and provide technical recommendations to GOI and USAID implementing partners on SBC/demand generation efforts aimed at promoting COVID appropriate behaviours.
- Utilize participatory methods to engage key stakeholders to increase uptake of critical public health measures and address barriers and challenges to implementation of public health interventions, incorporating methods to mitigate stigma and discrimination.
- Understanding that young key populations are at high risk of HIV infection due to high risk behaviors, social vulnerabilities specific to youth and significant stigma and discrimination, with mental health impact; co-create youth-friendly strategies that (i) improve their access to services, information and opportunities, (ii) enhance their participation in positive change-making (iii) espouse intersectoral policies and programs that integrate their specific issues into the larger health response, as part of health systems strengthening and (iv) advance the health and well-being of adolescents and youth.
- Identify ways in which adolescents’ and youths’ health and well-being can be improved using digital technology and innovation.
- Provide guidance to USAID India RCCE programs and ensure that they are evidence based, cutting-edge and build on past successes such as of polio programs thus ensuring they use context appropriate channels, proper audience segmentation and reach out to the most vulnerable groups.
- Strengthen network and partnership development on SBC interventions, working with a variety of stakeholders to explore synergies and leverage resources, and forging collaborations with design and communication organizations, donors and private sector across all HO teams.
- Prepare briefers, presentations or other documents to summarize progress, conduct regular data review, share results and trends, and facilitate sharing of SBC materials and best practices across US Government and other donor/bilateral programs.
- Provide technical support for development and review of partner work plans; monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) plans; progress reports, communication products and other deliverables, and assist in monitoring the project(s)’ technical and financial performance in achieving SBC goals and objectives.
- Collaborate with other SBC technical working groups and stakeholders within India to share evidence-based best practices, ensure coordination of materials and communication message strategies, to minimize overlaps and gaps.
- Outcome 3: Strengthen M&E for ongoing communication activities and accelerate knowledge sharing and best practices for measuring impact.
- Provide expertise to guide the implementation of an appropriate performance measurement strategy to effectively monitor and evaluate the extent to which the objectives of the USAID/India Behavior change programs have been achieved.
- Lead discussions with the Global Health Bureau and its technical offices, mission colleagues and with other counterparts, identifying needs and staying abreast of and applying the state-of-the-art advances, technologies, and best practices for improved measurement of effectiveness of SBC interventions.
- Ensure that behaviour change programs reflect sound project design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and documentation of experiences and results and ensure dissemination of these learnings for enhanced visibility of USAID’s work in behavior change.
- Work with implementing partners and our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning team to coordinate the implementation of targeted research and social online/offline listening amongst priority groups to generate behavioral insights to inform SBC interventions.
- Position USAID health and social behavior change programming as thought leader in India by sharing and disseminating evidence and best practices in policy and strategy consultations within in-country technical working groups and other networks.
- Other duties as assigned.
Deliverables:
• Cultivate mentorship skills based on the STAR GH mentorship curriculum to more effectively support and improve knowledge transfer and skills acquisition of staff, incoming fellows and interns.
• Advance leadership skills to successfully support capacity building and knowledge sharing activities, and mentor develop junior staff.
• Apply leadership skills and technical expertise to support programmatic growth and scale up within social behavior change programming.
Qualifications
Minimum Requirements:
• Experience in health promotion and communications in developing countries.
• International donor, PEPFAR or implementing partner experience preferred.
• The incumbent must have strong writing, communication, organizational, and IT skills (proficiency in standard office programs and data base managers–e.g. Microsoft Office); ability to facilitate meetings and to make oral presentations logically and persuasively to senior officials and partners in a multi-cultural context, along with the ability to produce concise, clear reports.
• Excellent and demonstrated English language skills – reading, writing and speaking.
• Must have the ability to work independently with minimum supervision and within a team in a fast paced, dynamic environment.
• Demonstrable results-oriented, flexible and problem-solving skills.
Education: Master’s Degree with 10 years, Bachelor’s with 12 years, Associate’s degree with 14 years or High School with 16 years of relevant education and experience in in communications, marketing, public health, international development or related field.
Working Environment: Work is typically performed in an office environment.
Physical Requirements: This is largely a sedentary position that requires the ability to speak, hear, see, and lift small objects up to 20 lbs.
Supervisory Responsibility: This position does not have supervisory responsibilities.
Travel: International travel may be required and may include travel to fragile and/or conflict-prone zones.
Work Authorization: Candidate must be authorized to work in India.
Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.
About the Organization:
IBTCI has been in business since 1987. We specialize in Monitoring, Evaluation, Research & Learning (MERL), Institutional Support (IS), Financial & Risk Management (FRM), Supply Chain Management & Procurement (SCMP); Social & Behavior Change (SBC) and Capacity Building. We provide these services across many sectors including, but not limited to, agriculture, resilience & food security, conflict & crisis, democracy & governance, economic growth & trade, education & human capacity development, energy & infrastructure, environment & climate change, global health & WASH and humanitarian and disaster assistance. At IBTCI, our colleagues are encouraged to collaborate and be part of the solution while getting the tools and guidance needed to grow and support our clients’ missions.
IBTCI is committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity for all persons without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identification, age, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, disabled veteran or Vietnam-era veteran, or any other classification protected by applicable anti-discrimination laws. We prohibit and do not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment. VEVRAA Federal Contractor.
If you are an applicant with a disability that requires a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability, or unable to use the online application system and need an alternative method for applying, you may contact the Talent Acquisition team at [email protected] (Do not send your resume to this account, for consideration please apply in our career page, https://careers.ibtci.com/jobs).