The National Department of Health (NDoH) and Ilifa Labantwana seek to appoint a service provider to test a newly-developed toolkit called The Healthworker’s Guide to the Road to Health book with the toolkit’s intended audience, so as to ascertain whether it is fit for purpose.
The Road to Health book (RTHb) is a caregiver-held record of child health and development which is issued by the NDoH to all new births in South Africa. The NDoH revised the RTHb in 2017 for the first time since its first publication in 2010.
The objectives for the 2017 RTHb are:
- To record the child’s health and development
- To encourage engagement and collaboration between caregivers and healthworkers
- To be an information source for caregivers around their children’s development
The purpose of the Healthworker’s Guide to the Road to Health book:
The Healthworker’s Guide to the Road to Health book (from here-on referred to as The Guide) was developed in 2018 to assist clinic-based healthcare workers, mostly nurses, with:
- completing all the health and development records of the RTHb, and
- using the RTHb to collaborate and engage with caregivers.
Trainers can also use this guide as a training tool.
The Guide outlines the following:
- Reasons for inclusion of each pillar
- The content scope of each pillar
- Guiding steps on how and when to perform specific procedures as well as how to record and interpret the data
- Key health promotion messages caregivers should read and understand from each pillar
- Other reference materials
The user testing of The Guide aims to assess the guide’s usability, presentation, comprehensibility and content consistency with clinic-based healthworkers.
Scope of work:
- Co-ordinate a rapid desk/internal review with DoH staff and other stakeholders to determine The Guide’s usability and content consistency. Document findings and recommendations.
- Organise and execute user testing with four groups of 10-15 healthworkers. The user testing is to begin with in-person training on The Guide which will be conducted by the NDoH, and is to be followed by a focus group discussion. Document findings and recommendations.
- Prepare and present a final report on the outcomes of the internal review and the user testing, which includes recommendations to improve The Guide’s usability, presentation, comprehensibility and content consistency.
User testing details:
- Clinic-based healthworkers (nurses and midwives)
- 10-15 healthworkers per focus group
- Four focus groups in total – situated in both rural and urban contexts
- Participants are given The Guide ahead of time for self-study
- Focus group discussion preceded by in-person training conducted by NDoH representative
- Proposed testing provinces include Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. NDoH will assist with access to healthworkers
Contractor expertise
The service provider will need to demonstrate the following:
- Expertise conducting qualitative research
- Knowledge and experience of the South African public health system preferable
- Sound writing and presentation skills
Click here for the full terms of reference and details on how to apply.
