Consultant to Conduct a Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention End of Round Assessment (SMC-EORA) at Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is an international non-governmental organization supporting relief and development work in over 99 countries around the world. CRS programs assist people based on need, regardless of creed, ethnicity, or nationality. CRS works through local church and non-church partners to implement its programs, therefore, strengthening and building the capacity of partner organizations is fundamental to the work of CRS. CRS re-established its presence in Nigeria in 2000 and currently focuses on health, vulnerable children, agriculture, extractive and governance, and peace-building programming.

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’s relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

Applications are invited from suitable Consultants for:

Title: Consultant to Conduct a Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention End of Round Assessment (SMC-EORA)

Locations: Adamawa, Jigawa, Katsina, and Yobe

Scope of Work

• The 2025 seasonal malaria chemoprevention end-of-round assessment (SMC-EORA) Consultants in 4 states (Adamawa, Jigawa, Katsina, and Yobe).

Project Background

• CRS has a long and rich history of collaboration with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (Global Fund). In Nigeria, CRS has been a Co-Principal Recipient (PR) of the Global Fund Malaria grant since January 2017.
• As a Co-PR, CRS partnered with its sub-recipients, the National Malaria Elimination Program (NMEP), the State Malaria Elimination Program (SMEP), and other stakeholders to coordinate and implement Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention since 2018.
• For the 2024-2026 Grant Cycle 7 (GC7) of the Global Fund Malaria grant, CRS has remained a Co-PR with NMEP, strengthening the synergy and collaboration with NMEP to improve access, efficiency, and impact of quality malaria services in the 13 GF-supported states.
• These critical interventions include malaria treatment and prevention services such as facility and community-based case management of malaria, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), ITN campaign/Routine distribution, Integrated ITN and SMC campaign, social and behaviour change activities, and routine M&E activities.
• CRS implements through three sub-recipients - Society for Family Health (SFH), Malaria Consortium (MC), and Management Sciences for Health (MSH) to support SMC implementation in 8 states (Adamawa, Jigawa, Katsina, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Taraba, and Yobe) in collaboration with the NMEP which provides leadership and ICT4D support for the campaign.

Scope

• CRS is looking for four (4) consultants, one for each of the following states: Adamawa, Jigawa, Katsina, and Yobe. The consultants should have experience in public health research and will be responsible for conducting an end-of-round assessment of the 2025 SMC. The assessment will focus on evaluating the coverage and implementation quality.
• The scope of work is to carry out data collection, analysis, interpretation and development for the End of Round (EoR) programmatic assessment report.
• The consultant will train supervisors, data collectors, oversee data collection process and carry out the actual supervision of data collection using an electronic platform in the state.
• The EoR evaluation will be conducted in four (4) states as listed above where SMC is being implemented in 4 cycles. The aim of the EoR evaluation is to assess SMC coverage and adherence of CDDs to treatment protocol immediately at end of the fourth cycle of treatment. Findings will be analysed and any LGA scoring less than 80% will be targeted for corrective measures in their area of poor performance for improvement in subsequent rounds.
• The consultant is also expected to have excellent skills in the design of mobile data collection tools, data visualization, analysis and report writing. Therefore, experience with use of Kobo collect/Survey CTO, Tableau/Power BI, SPSS/STATA and programmable software like MySQL is desirable.
• The consultant will work with CRS in ensuring SMC data is harnessed in databases, meet quality standard, analysed, reported, and used for programme improvement.
• More specifically the consultant will make it possible to:
  • Assess self-reported SMC coverage among the targeted population
  • Identify the main factors associated with community drug distributors’ visits and treatment administration during the round of SMC.
  • Measure adherence to the SMC protocol by the caregivers and distributors (CDDs).
  • Highlight the most effective information channel on SMC.
  • Measure the degree of information given to mothers/caregivers on what to do in case of adverse reaction to SMC.

Methodology:

• The survey will be based on the LQAS methodology. The epidemiological unit of analysis, sample size, and sampling techniques for selecting sites and individual households within the selected sites are detailed in the SMC end-of-round programmatic assessment National protocol (see Annex 1).
• Bidders will train data collectors based on the protocol and use electronic data collection devices for the data collection process.
• Bidders must demonstrate understanding and ability to operationalize the protocol in technical and financial bids.
• The survey will be conducted within 10 days. Activities will include an entry meeting with the state, 1 to 2 days of training of the data collectors, 5 days of data collection in the field, 2 days for data analysis, debrief meeting on the preliminary findings and final report.

Deliverables:

• Develop an activity Gantt chat for the survey.
• Conduct an entry meeting and a debriefing of the preliminary report with the state and NMEP, CRS, and SR.
• Train data collectors on the methodology to be used based on the National protocol.
• Manage the entire data collection process including deploy and monitor data collectors during data collection, ensure that the right methodology is used and the use of mobile devices for data collection.
• Ensure quality of the data collected prior to the analysis
• Analyse data and provide an analytical and narrative report within a maximum of three (3) weeks after the end of the survey, covering the following key indicators:
  • Coverage among eligible children (3-59 months), by cycle, as defined above.
  • Proportions of eligible children according to the number of SMC cycles received.
  • Proportion of children receiving at least one (1), two (2) three (3), and all four SMC (4) cycles.
  • Reported treatment adherence by caregivers.
  • Other secondary indicators as contained in the protocol.
• Collaborate with the consultants from other states to develop and submit:
  • A detailed state-specific report documenting the entire process, including methodology, challenges, and outcomes.
  • A PowerPoint presentation summarizing preliminary findings across the four states, highlighting key trends, insights, and recommendations.
• The language of all reports will be English.

Timing:

• The survey will start 1 week after the completion of the SMC cycle 4 in each state.
• Training of data collectors, data collection process, entry and debrief meetings will all be conducted within a 10-day period.
• The period for conducting the survey is contingent upon the completion of the 4th cycle in the states

Requirements
CRS is looking for a consultant with:

• Capacity / human resource (experienced survey consultant/specialist) to survey more than one state within the same period.
• At least 3 years’ experience in conducting public health research/surveys.
• Previous experience conducting similar community field research/surveys.
• Knowledge of SMC implementation and processes.

Application Closing Date
Tuesday, 9th September, 2025.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified bidders should submit their proposal together with the budget / financial bid and a sample of previous surveys conducted via:
THIS LINK

Note
Equal Employer Opportunity: 

• CRS is an equal–opportunity employer, does not discriminate based on race, color, religion and we are committed to gender-sensitive programming and management. etc.
• Qualified women are strongly encouraged to apply.

Safeguarding:

• CRS is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all people who interact with our work. We uphold the highest standards of safeguarding and expect all staff and partners to respect and protect the dignity and rights of everyone from any form of harm, abuse, harassment, or exploitation.
• All staff are required to follow CRS’s safeguarding policies and procedures and to complete mandatory safeguarding e-learning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.
• Statement of Commitment to Protection: ‘’CRS’ recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to protecting children and vulnerable adults from abuse and exploitation’’.