Epidemiologist, Research Associate, West Africa

Epidemiologist, Research Associate, West Africa

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Overview

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 and Central 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. In addition, CHAI is also supporting national malaria programs to identify the bottlenecks and potential solutions in surveillance systems to improve data-driven decisions at all levels of the system. Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin and Burkina Faso are the newest additions to CHAI’s portfolio. Initial efforts have been focused on conducting country-specific surveillance landscaping assessments, with the longer-term vision to improve data-driven decision-making and program planning across the region.

 

Overview of Role:

 

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated epidemiologist with strong public health experience and analytical skills to support the expanded surveillance and analytics scope of work across francophone West and Central Africa, with an initial focus on Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin and Burkina Faso. The initial project will focus on monitoring and analyzing data from surveillance assessments including health facility surveys in order to identify of critical technical, operational and financial bottlenecks in surveillance (data collection, reporting, analysis and feedback) at all levels of the health system (health facility up to national), and provide prioritized recommendations to address these gaps. Activities will expand to include analysis of routine and other data in order to: 1) understand drivers of transmission (for example environmental factors, and vector control and case management interventions), 2) assess impact of interventions, 3) develop plans to target interventions and monitor their rollout as well as other analytical requests. The individual will report to the Senior Technical Advisor for Africa and 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 Research Associate will need to collaborate with government programs, academics and public health agencies to ensure CHAI’s work is complementary and not duplicative other ongoing efforts.

 

CHAI places great value on relevant personal qualities including resourcefulness, tenacity, independence, patience, humility, and strong work ethic.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a thought leader, manage and implement analytical projects related to malaria epidemiology, intervention and surveillance, as required;
• 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;
• Provide high-quality analytical support to CHAI country teams, government staff, and relevant partners, which includes:
  • 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
  • Organize, clean, and integrate primary and secondary epidemiological and spatial datasets
  • Conduct statistical and spatial analyses
  • 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
• Provide technical supervision, training and ad-hoc programmatic support to staff members involved in epidemiological activities and/or ongoing management of junior staff based across the region;
• Contribute to the formulation of annual work plans across multiple countries, and pro-actively ensure the implementation of epidemiology related activities;
• Develop and maintain strong working relationships with key stakeholders across government, non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions, with support from program managers;
• Synthesize results, translate them to national and sub-national government partners, non-technical partners and CHAI teams to support evidence-based decision making, and disseminate findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications internally and externally at international venues;
• Represent CHAI at external technical meetings, representing the organization to academic/technical partners within the region; and
• Any other tasks identified.

Qualifications

• Fluent in English and French languages;
• Master's degree in Public Health, Epidemiology or related field;
• 2+ years of working experience on epidemiological projects in global health;
• Strong experience with data entry, data management and statistical analysis of primary and secondary epidemiological datasets using statistical software (R, SAS, STATA and/or other relevant software);
  Experience generating maps, managing and analyzing spatial data using spatial software (e.g. ArcGIS, QGIS);
• Experience conducting and managing epidemiological surveys in country, including the analysis of surveillance and survey data;
• Familiarity with disease surveillance, strengthening information systems, monitoring and evaluation of surveillance systems and/or public health programs;
• Experience working and communicating with government officials and other external partners;
• 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;
• Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems;
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills; and
• Willingness to travel (40-50% of time).

 Advantages:

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