WaterAid is seeking a consultant to deliver a report articulating the impact of access to, and lack of access to, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) on under-five child health, and from which WaterAid can then develop advocacy and communications assets. The task must be completed by 30 September 2017.

Expertise required
The consultant will be a researcher or economist with experience of delivering research and analysis on WASH and child health, health systems or health economics in low- and middle-income countries.

Rationale
Lack of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) contributes to a large variety of childhood diseases, both directly and indirectly. Much of this impact is difficult to quantify due to lack of readily-available and reliable statistical data, and due to the interlinked nature of some of those conditions (for example, the multi-route relationship between WASH and undernutrition, and between undernutrition and other childhood illnesses (such as pneumonia and diarrhoea). At the same time, a growing evidence base illustrates that improving integration of WASH and child health programmes can strengthen the prevention of diarrhoeal and other diseases, improve health outcomes, and achieve greater efficiencies. However, again, it is challenging to quantify the benefits of more integrated programming and case studies of effective programming are still in relatively short supply.
WaterAid has formed an advocacy partnership with PATH seeking to raise awareness of and generate specific political and/or financial commitments for:
The importance of WASH to preventing diarrheal diseases (the second leading cause of death in children under five years old) – in terms of mortality and morbidity (with morbidity being a relatively neglected issue in child health advocacy)
Improving integration of WASH and child health programmes, with a potential focus on integration with vaccination initiatives to prevent diarrhoeal and other diseases and contribute towards improved vaccine efficacy

Objectives
To quantify and conceptualise the impact of WASH on child health, for example in terms of:
- the benefits of effective WASH-health integration in terms of lives saved through WASH, improved health/nutrition impacts, VfM/cost-saving, patient-centred approach, reducing burden on frontline health workers.
- the costs of not integrating for example, more school days lost, worker sick days, hospital beds being used.
Clearly illustrate how to communicate the complexity of WASH-child health links in simple and powerful ways, such as through figures, diagrams, visualisations etc.

Deliverables
Conceptual framework of the links between WASH and child health, including direct and indirect links
Basic graphic representation(s) of the above conceptual framework
Short report (less than 20 pages) outlining the conceptual framework including assumptions, level of confidence/ranges as necessary, and summarizing the strongest arguments/case for greater WASH-health integration
Short presentation (less than 30mins, plus discussion) to be given to lead staff from WaterAid and PATH.

Timeline
Task to be completed by 30 September 2017, according to the following schedule:
15 July – Consultant conducts initial scoping of existing evidence and delivers proposal of likely outputs for mutual approval by WaterAid and PATH (including methodology report, key stats, graphical representation of the evidence such as a map of determinants of morbidity and mortality)
31 Aug – Consultant delivers first draft report for feedback from WaterAid
15 Sept – Consultant delivers second draft report for feedback from WaterAid
30 Sept – Consultant delivers and presents final report to WaterAid and PATH

Submission process:
Interested consultants should submit a brief (maximum two pages) description of:
Capacity to deliver the work
Proposed approach
Indicative budget.

All submissions should be sent no later than close of business on 11 July 2017 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.