FANTA-2 Project, Washington DC
FANTA-2 (www.fanta-2.org [1]) is a USAID-funded project managed by AED (http://aed.org/ [2]) that is working with the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) in Vietnam and PEPFAR/Vietnam to integrate food and nutrition care and support into HIV services. Weight loss and malnutrition are common features of HIV infection. Food and nutrition interventions help improve immune response, response to treatment, nutritional status, and quality of life. Children and adults with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) require medication and ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), which is soft, energy-dense, fortified food that needs no preparation and is easy to eat for people with mouth sores. To inform national nutrition and HIV guidelines and procurement planning in Vietnam, a study is needed to determine whether the imported peanut-based RUTF Plumpy’Nut® or a locally produced rice, mung bean, and soy product fortified with vitamin/mineral premix is acceptable to adults and children with HIV in Vietnam and whether they are able to adhere to the recommended dosage.
FANTA-2 is requesting proposals from interested individuals and firms able to deliver the following services in support of the activity:
Prepare a written protocol for the assessment that takes into consideration feasibility and ease of data collection and logistical and budget constraints.
Write a data collection guide in English and Vietnamese.
Prepare complete notes from data collection for data analysis.
Write a final report in English and Vietnamese.
Required qualifications
- Ability to engage a principal investigator with an MD or PhD in nutrition, epidemiology, or other related health or research science field
- Successful collaboration with NIN in designing and implementing studies of similar scope, preferably acceptability studies or ready-to-use food products
- Technical knowledge of ready-to-use foods and their specifications
- At least 5 years of experience designing nutrition surveys
- Familiarity with nutrition assessment for people with acute malnutrition
- Fluency in English
- Extensive experience with questionnaire design, sampling, survey logistics, managing enumerators, and data collection and analysis
- Required personnel include a survey manager, field supervisors and enumerators.
- Proven ability to deliver final products on schedule
Estimated level of effort: 50 working days
Please submit a letter of interest to request the complete scope of work by writing to [email protected] [3] before September 17, 2010.