Epidemiologist, Research Associate, Southern Africa

Epidemiologist, Research Associate, Southern 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.

 

Overview of Role:

 

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with strong public health experience and analytical skills. This individual will support surveillance, analytics, and programmatic activities related to malaria elimination efforts. The epidemiologist will focus primarily on supporting Mozambique and South Africa as well as other countries of southern Africa where CHAI is working. Specifically, the epidemiologist will contribute to the implementation and institutionalization of integrated malaria information systems, strengthening surveillance processes and technologies related to data collection tools and visualization (e.g. dashboards), monitoring and evaluation of surveillance systems, and analysis of routine malaria surveillance data and intervention data. As such, the individual will work with a number of individuals on CHAI’s global, regional and country teams and will therefore need to possess strong communication and organizational skills. It is expected that the epidemiologist will need to partner 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.

Responsibilities

Surveillance support (50%)

• Supporting integration of data use and analysis in routine programmatic activities at all levels of the health system;
• Supporting development, integration, and institutionalization of malaria information systems, including data collection tools and dashboards;
• Assisting to monitor and evaluate the performance of existing and new surveillance platforms, in collaboration with the health informatics malaria team at CHAI;
• Developing guidelines, SOPs, and training materials for malaria surveillance activities;

Analytical support (20%)

• Organizing and merging available data and assessing its quality and suitability for analysis;
• Conducting statistical and spatial analyses (descriptive analyses, regressions and other relevant methods);
• Managing and coordinating analytical projects related to malaria epidemiology, intervention targeting (e.g. Indoor Residual Spraying, LLIN distribution, health worker allocations) and surveillance, as required;
• Synthesizing results and communicating them through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications;
• Performing scientific literature review as needed;

Programmatic/operational support (30%)

• Formulating and delivering national and sub-national level training materials with a focus on analytical content (e.g. data management best practices, online data collection tools), and surveillance strengthening;
• Assisting with the development of operational plans and accompanying manuals and guidelines to support malaria case detection, case management and vector control activities;
• Developing and implementing M&E plans for CHAI and program activities, including monitoring and evaluating the implementation of relevant malaria interventions
• Translating results to national and sub-national government partners to support evidence-based decision making;
• Developing and maintaining strong working relationships with key stakeholders across government and non-governmental organizations, with support from program managers;
• Any other tasks identified.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Public Health, Epidemiology, GIS or related field;
• 1+ years of working experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership;
• Knowledge of malaria and/or other major global infectious disease problems;
• Proven experience in disease surveillance and strengthening information systems;
• Familiarity with monitoring and evaluation of surveillance systems and/or public health programs;
• Proven experience in the epidemiological and spatial analysis of disease data;
• Statistical and geospatial analysis programming experience (R, SAS, STATA, ArcGIS, QGIS and/or other relevant software);
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications;
• Experience working and communicating with government officials and multilateral organizations;
• Ability to work independently in remote and unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges;
• Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems;
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills;
• Willingness to travel (up to 30-50% of time)

Advantages:

• Portuguese language skill;
• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings;
• Experience working with a decentralized team;
• Experience conducting and managing epidemiological surveys;
• Experience working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g. ODK) and/or data visualization applications (e.g. Tableau)