ICARS is pleased to announce a new Request for Proposals (RFP), released in partnership with Wellcome.
The purpose of the RFP is to initiate a project to develop guidelines for facilitating Responsive Dialogues in a variety of Low- and Middle-Income (LMIC) settings. The `Responsive Dialogues on Drug Resistant Infections´ approach was developed by Wellcome to support Public Engagement. The Responsive Dialogues ‘toolkit’ has been piloted in Thailand and Malawi and has been used to generate solutions for addressing Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) that are grounded in local realities and embrace ideas and views from the public.
Guided by the Responsive Dialogues toolkit and supported by Wellcome, ICARS is currently partnering with Eden University in Zambia on a project which carries out Responsive Dialogues to identify contextually relevant solutions to mitigate AMR in the context of Urinary Tract Infections (UTI). The project complements another ICARS project that introduces an antimicrobial stewardship programme in selected Zambian healthcare facilities to improve antibiotic prescription practices for treating UTIs and blood stream infections. The conversation events, which are at the core of Responsive Dialogues, have just started, addressing patient perceptions and practices, and identifying community-driven solutions. This will directly complement the ICARS’ project being run parallel, enabling cross-fertilisation of insights and engagement.
Drawing on the lessons learnt from Responsive Dialogue pilots in Malawi, Thailand and Zambia, this RFP aims to revise the existing toolkit to develop guidelines for facilitating Responsive Dialogues in the context of ICARS projects in LMICs. While maintaining the flexibility and adaptability of the existing toolkit, the new guidelines will offer a modular approach to conducting Responsive Dialogues that can be adapted to different LMIC settings, including by capitalizing on already existing work.
All of ICARS’ projects are tailored to respond to country’s individual needs and challenges, and solutions are guided by the problems that countries are committed to solve, rather than following a one-size-fits-all agenda. The new guidelines will be a valuable tool to facilitate public engagement with exactly that aim, ensuring country ownership, solution-focused interventions, and sustainability of solutions.
The deadline for proposals is December 1st, 2022.
The project has an available maximum budget of 104,724 USD and all proposals must be from organisations based in LMICs without exception.
Please see the full RFP document for more details.
For more information and any enquiries related to the RFP including eligibility, please contact RFPresponsivedialogues@icars-global.org.
