Nutrition Advisor - Nigeria Integrated Health Program at Palladium Group

Location: Sokoto  Application Link

               Kebbi  Application Link

               Bauchi   Application Link

Project/ Role Overview

• IHP is an integrated health program with an expanded effort with the Government of Nigeria (GON) to identify and support rapid scale-up of proven interventions through improvement of service delivery and strengthening of health systems.
• It will focus its support for service delivery in six intervention areas, family planning, malaria, routine immunization, nutrition, maternal/newborn health, and treatment of childhood pneumonia/diarrhea.

Overview 

• State level Nutrition Advisor will be responsible for providing leadership in nutrition capacity building, clinical mentoring and supportive supervision in the technical area of nutrition for an upcoming USAID award in Nigeria.
• The State level Nutrition Advisor will provide technical assistance at the State primary health care and community level activities. This integrated health project aims to contribute to reductions in child and maternal morbidity and mortality in target states, and to increase the capacity of health systems (public and private) to sustainably support quality PHC. 
• Also, the position will provide support to strengthen community-based services to enhance access, referrals and linkages to the formal PHC system. The project will operate over a 5-year period.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical guidance on nutrition specific interventions through PHC and community-based platforms.  Guidance must be sound, evidence-based and responsive to the needs of Sokoto State and USAID
• Provide technical leadership, and build local capacity using proven training approaches on promotion of exclusive breastfeeding through the revised WHO guidelines for Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (for optimal breastfeeding promotion), the Baby Friendly Community Initiative and Comprehensive Infant and Young Child Feeding practices.
• Provide curriculum review, revision, and master training oversight and follow-up clinical mentoring to promote maternal nutrition (nutrition in pregnancy, nutrition while breastfeeding, management of diarrhea), and nutrition through the lifecycle with emphasis on complementary feeding (6-23 months) and dietary diversity.
• Provide guidance on how to incorporate high impact nutrition services (maternal/child supplementation, EBF promotion) into antenatal, intra and post-partum care, as well as integrated management of childhood illness protocols and integrated community case management protocols.
• Provide guidance to facility (PHC) and community-based structures (CHIPS/CORPS) to enhance community based nutrition counseling and case detection and referral of MAM/CMAM cases for appropriate treatment and counseling.
• Liaise with the SPHCDA, PHCs, and UNICEF-supported CMAM sites to support follow-up, and case management activities within the community.
• Liaise with M&E and SPHCDA staff to encourage case management, follow-up, and surveillance of nutritional status.
• Work with SPHCDA to initiate a nutritious cooking demonstrations within the PHC. The nutrition advisor will review/modify an associated curriculum design, and develop supervision methods to scale PHC-based, participatory cooking demonstrations emphasizing use of in-season, locally available nutritious and diverse foods.
• Work with partners, to provide key nutrition messages to radio-broadcasted, cooking contests that promote award-winning nutritious recipes in order to facilitate awareness about how to cook diverse, local foods.
• Advocate with other ministries, community, NGO’s, and religious leaders to support and promote support and access to best practices for nutrition: (breastfeeding, water, sanitation and hygiene, infant and young child feeding and household dietary diversity)
• Contribute to and coordinate with the program’s monitoring and evaluation (M&E) team on activities to ensure that the program meets set targets in accordance with national and USG standards.
• Represent program at state level stakeholder meetings and technical working groups in relation to service/quality improvement of RMNCH and related technical areas.

Management:

• Contribute to annual work planning, training plans and quarterly reports and other required technical reports.
• Contribute to timely, accurate and appropriate reporting of program activities and results.
• Ensure quality program implementation consistent with MOH Nigerian Guidelines, global best practices and USAID Nigerian Strategic Directions.
• Evaluate program progress against deliverables on a quarterly basis
• With the State Technical Director, oversee program design, implementation, quality assurance and monitoring of work plan.
• Coordinate with the other members of the technical team and NGO partners to develop and implement feasible facility and community-based approaches
• Perform other duties as assigned by supervisor which contribute to the achievement of program goals.

Required Qualifications
State level Nutrition Advisor must be a proven leader in the field of with senior-level management experience in public health programs.  S/he must be well recognized by the RMNCH community in Nigeria. The Advisor must be intimately familiar with the context in Nigeria and have in-country experience with USAID programs. Additional qualifications include:

• An experienced Nutrition Advisor or any other closely related health care professional; other related courses (e.g. MPH, MSC, dietetics or other relevant degree) will be an advantage.
• Minimum 7 years of experience working in Nutrition in Africa, preferably in Nigeria
• Demonstrated expertise in working directly with host-country senior government officials and policy makers in nutrition and MNCH.
• Experience working with host-country partners, organizations, and institutions
• Strong skills in design, implementation and monitoring of program components; e.g. services, training, supportive supervision, clinical mentoring, patient counseling, advocacy and coordination.
• Demonstrated capacity to work with African experts and partners in developing technical materials and providing training to improve service delivery, advocacy and resource mobilization for expanding quality improvement of RMNCH services.
• Experience with technical leadership for programs funded by USAID and/or other donor programs in developing countries, with significant Nigeria experience.
• Strong verbal, listening, writing, and intrapersonal skills essential for effective coordination among several institutions and staff involved in a broad range of activities.
• Fluent in English, (written and oral communication) and Hausa and/or Fulfulde.
• Willingness to travel throughout Nigeria as necessary.