Technical Advisor, Malaria Analytics, Surveillance and Technology, West, Central and East Africa Full Time

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI’s global malaria program provides direct technical and operational support to countries around the globe to strengthen their malaria programs and reduce the burden of this preventable, treatable disease. We support governments to scale up effective interventions for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance, with the goals of sustainably reducing the number of malaria-related illnesses and deaths worldwide in the short-term and accelerating progress towards malaria elimination in the long term.

In parts of West, Central and East Africa, CHAI provides technical and managerial assistance to national malaria programs in order to accelerate policy changes, ensure sufficient supply commodities, generate demand among health providers and patients and ensure adequate monitoring and troubleshooting mechanisms are in place to track progress. Over the last few years, CHAI has also expanded its support to include surveillance and is helping national malaria programs in this region to identify the bottlenecks and potential solutions to improve the collection, reporting, analysis and use of data for programmatic decision-making.

Overview of Role:

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with strong public health experience, strong analytical skills and project management experience to manage and support the existing as well as new surveillance and analytics scope of work across West, Central and East Africa. The aim of this support is to ensure that National Malaria Programs and Ministries of Health are using robust evidence to inform their strategic and operational decision-making to accelerate efforts towards malaria country goals. The individual will work with team members across CHAI’s Global, Regional and Country Malaria Teams and will therefore need to possess strong communication and organizational skills. It is expected that the Technical Advisor will need to collaborate with government programs, academics and public health agencies to ensure CHAI’s work is complementary and not duplicative. CHAI places great value on relevant personal qualities including resourcefulness, tenacity, independence, patience, humility, and strong work ethic.

This position will be ideally based in Dakar, Senegal; or other countries within West Africa based on country leadership approvals.

Responsibilities

1. Serve as a technical advisor and thought leader to CHAI’s regional malaria team;
2. Proactively review existing evidence and conduct analyses on primary and secondary data to evaluate effectiveness of the current operations, and identify potential approaches or strategies to accelerate progress;
3. Provide technical mentorship, supervision, training and ongoing support to a small team of junior epidemiologists and other staff members based in the region and involved in surveillance assessments, rollout of surveillance tools and processes, monitoring and evaluation of existing activities, study implementation and all data analysis tasks;
4. Manage multiple analytical projects related to malaria epidemiology, intervention and surveillance, and other programmatic decisions;
5. Provide high-quality analytical support to CHAI country teams, government staff, and relevant partners, which includes:
   • Oversee design (defining research questions, protocol development, survey and sampling design), implementation (formulating training material, training and monitoring survey data collectors), analysis and dissemination of operational research, with a focus on surveillance system assessments
   • Help monitor and evaluate the performance of existing and new surveillance processes and platforms, and identify ways of improving them
   • Work directly with governmental staff to better integrate epidemiological, entomological, and programmatic data use and analysis into routine programmatic activities at all levels of the health system
   • Organize, clean, and integrate datasets; conduct statistical and spatial analyses
   • Support rigorous evidence-based planning of intervention deployment, and design and implement monitoring and evaluation activities to measure impact
   • Support the ongoing evaluation and iterative strengthening of the performance of community health workers programs
6. Manage and develop resources and best practices to share lessons across teams, and synthesize and disseminate findings both internally and externally through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications
7. Cultivate and establish relationships with other CHAI teams, government organizations, and regional and in-country partners working on data analysis or surveillance to inform elimination goals
8. Represent CHAI at external technical meetings, acting as the face of our organization to academic/technical partners within the region
9. Communicate technical concepts to non-technical partners and CHAI teams; and
10. Any other tasks identified.Qualifications

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in Public Health, Epidemiology or related field
• Fluent in English and French languages
• 3-5 years of working experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership, including in program and staff management
• Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems
• Experience with designing, conducting, and analyzing epidemiological surveys
• Experience in evaluating, working with, and strengthening disease surveillance systems
• Experience in working and communicating with government officials and other external partners
• Exceptional skills in the epidemiological analysis of health data and the application of analyses for decision-making
• Statistical and geospatial analysis programming experience (including expertise with R, SAS, STATA, ArcGIS and/or other relevant software)
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications
• Ability to work independently in remote and unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges
• Ability to collaborate and operate as part of a multi-cultural team
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills
• Willingness to travel (50% of time)
• Experience living or working in high-risk countries

Advantages:**

• Experience working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2) and data collection tools (e.g. ODK and Survey CTO)
• Experience working in fast-paced, output-oriented environments such as management consulting, investment banking or industry
• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings
• Experience working with a decentralized team
• Knowledge of malaria and/or other major global infectious disease problems

Tagged as: CHAI, Senegal