Position description
CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with strong public health experience and analytical skills to serve as an epidemiologist and technical advisor to its teams across West and Central Africa. This role offers a unique opportunity for a talented individual to apply epidemiological and analytical skills to guide the operations of cross-country disease control and elimination programs. The successful candidate will lead a small team of epidemiologists working directly with government counterparts to assess, design, and scale-up disease surveillance systems; conduct robust data analysis; and monitor and evaluate the success of ongoing efforts to achieve malaria and NTD control and elimination. The individual will collaborate with a diverse team of CHAI staff based across multiple countries (primarily but not exclusively in Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and Sierra Leone), government programs, academics, technology companies, and public health agencies. The successful candidate will possess strong communication, organizational, and management skills; work independently to drive implementation; have the potential to grow into a global health leader; and have deep personal commitment to producing results.
Flexible base location across Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Sierra Leone - pending leadership approval.
Responsibilities
Regional Strategy:
- Lead all malaria and NTD surveillance and analytics work for West and Central Africa and other geographies, as required.
- Serve as an expert/technical advisor for epidemiological and strategic questions to CHAI’s regional team, country teams, and for senior leadership.
- Serve as a lead contributor to building and implementing CHAI’s FrWCA malaria and NTDs strategic vision, focusing on robust use of epidemiological data and analysis to inform strategic processes.
- Along with digital health colleagues, develop and communicate a coherent vision for malaria and NTD information systems within and across countries, and influence internal and external stakeholders and initiatives to drive vision forward.
- Support rigorous evidence-based planning of intervention deployment, and design and implement monitoring to evaluate effectiveness of current government interventions and identify potential approaches or strategies to accelerate progress.
Technical project implementation and management:
- Oversee the implementation of analytics, surveillance and technology projects to support evidence-based decisions.
- Organize, clean, and integrate datasets; conduct statistical analyses; and develop and interpret malaria risk maps and stratifications.
- Contribute to the formulation of annual work plans across multiple countries.
- Lead monitoring and evaluation of the performance of existing and new surveillance processes and platforms, and identify ways of improving them.
- Guide the development and deployment of surveillance system digital tools and platforms in country and ensure alignment of technology solutions with strategic objectives, in collaboration with CHAI Health Informatics staff.
- Review and ensure high quality surveillance and analytics guidelines and SOPs, M&E plans, lessons learned documents, and operational manuals.
- Oversee design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination of operational research projects related to surveillance, intervention effectiveness, and entomology.
- Support the development of country-led systems for conducting data analysis and leading surveillance related processes.
Team management and partner collaboration:
- Directly manage, onboard, provide technical mentorship, supervision, guidance, and training to a small team of junior and mid-level epidemiologists based across the region; provide guidance, direction, and mentorship to staff across the region.
- Work directly with technical teams, country teams and governmental staff to better integrate epidemiological, entomological, and programmatic data use and analysis into routine programmatic activities at all levels of the health system.
- Cultivate and establish relationships with local academic institutions, NGOs (e.g. PSI, PATH, FHI360), and regional organizations (e.g. WHO AFRO, WHO PPH) working on data analysis or surveillance to inform malaria and NTD goals, which may include management of contracts with external partners.
Communication and knowledge management:
- Manage and develop resources and best practices to share lessons across teams; synthesize and disseminate findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications.
- Represent CHAI at external technical meetings, acting as the face of the organization to academic/technical partners within the region, including via the dissemination of findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications.
- Review and/or contribute to the development of the technical sections of grant deliverables (power points, programmatic reports, grant proposals, scoping documents). Any other tasks identified.
Qualifications
- Masters in public health, epidemiology or related field
- 5+ years of work experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership, including management experience
- Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems focusing on malaria, NTDs and/or other major global infectious disease concerns
- Experience contributing to strategic planning through rigorous data use processes
- Experience mentoring and managing junior technical staff
- 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, STATA, ArcGIS, QGIS and/or other relevant software)
- High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications
- Proficiency in report writing and other concise written communications
- 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 extensively (40-50% of time)
- Fluency in English and French
- Knowledge of malaria, NTD, and/or other major global infectious disease problems
- Experience in programming (e.g., JavaScript, Python) and/or working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g. ODK, SurveyCTO) and/or data visualization applications (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI)
- Experience working in fast-paced, output-oriented environments
- Experience living or working in resource-limited settings, especially in West and Central Africa
Application instructions
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