Specifications include, but are not limited to: The Department is looking for key community organizations, the faith-based community and other stakeholders to address community needs with a range of services and or programs that will mitigate the social context conditions and risk factors that conspire to compromise the health and wellbeing of vulnerable populations, especially women of childbearing age. This RFP seeks a contractor to 1.) serve as the backbone organization to subcontract, support and manage the key organizations directly delivering the needed interventions and, 2.) transition the back-bone role to a local community-based organization by the end of the cycle. Two of the top drivers for infant mortality in Delaware are preterm births and low birthweight births. This RFP seeks proposals for strategies addressing challenges across the state, with special emphasis on the HWHB Zones, with the ultimate goal of reducing preterm and low birth weight rates. The awarded contractor will support the Department though facilitation and project management to implement the HWHB Zones SDOH (social determinants of health) project that will provide grants for 3 to 6 subcontractor organizations (community-based faith-based and other stakeholder organizations) by September 2024. The contractor will use a collective impact approach to ensure the subcontractors are fully engaged around intent and implantation to successfully implement interventions to address SDOH driving poor birth outcomes. The contractor will provide operational oversight (administrative and financial) to the subcontractor projects on behalf of the Department. The awarded contractor will meet the following essential core functions: • Establish a sustainable financing mechanism for supporting the implementation of promising SDOH interventions (through an established “mini grant” process) and the provision of needed planning and evaluation services. • Provide administrative and fiscal resource support to the subcontracting organizations and the ongoing measurement and evaluation of impacts. • Provide lead support to the SDOH Advisory Committee to oversee all components of the HWHB SDOH Initiative and steer its path forward. • Provide technical assistance to the selected “mini grant” organizations in data collection/tracking measures, budgeting and in continuous quality improvement. • Identify, train, and deploy a local community-based organization (CBO), mid-cycle with the goal of having the CBO fully assume the role of backbone organization by the end of the cycle.
