Associate Director, Epidemiology & Research at Georgetown Global Health Nigeria (GGHN)

Job Overview

• The incumbent will design, implement, coordinate, and promote sound epidemiology activities essential for the detection, control, and prevention of Global Health Security threats and Events.
• The incumbent will strive to achieve a sustainable impact on health security and protection by providing normative guidance while furthering the implementation of surveys, and evidence-based surveillance interventions and fostering alliances that strengthen various Global Health Security (GHS) capacities, improve effectiveness, and facilitate decision-making processes through improved information coverage, analysis, and quality at all levels.
• The incumbent will provide technical advice and hands-on implementation, including training and mentorship in various pillars of GHS including the development of guidelines and standards.
• The incumbent will play a critical role in the detection, monitoring, outbreak response, and provision of scientific evidence to prevent and control infectious diseases.

Role and Responsibilities
Applied Epidemiology:

• Provide epidemiological input to ensure that all public health programs have measurable relevant objectives in line with current practices and events.
• Develop and support the adoption of practices that categorize the intersection and power of the stakeholders having an impact on public health policies about infectious disease control and engage with them effectively.
• Practice and promote the adoption of ethical standards and norms with integrity, promoting professional accountability.
• Use current knowledge of the clinical, socio-behavioral, fundamental biomedical sciences, and epidemiology of diseases to guide public health or epidemiological practice by contributing to the development and updating of various packages (training, research, publications, and others)
• Use knowledge of contextual issues such as policy and legislation, organization of the healthcare system and service delivery, and socio-economic and socio-cultural factors in the population to conduct studies and recommend public health actions relevant to the affected communities.
• Apply knowledge of the different one-health laboratory methods and practices for diagnosis and typing and support the laboratory team in the (1) identification, recommendation, and interpretation of various diagnostic and epidemiological significance of reports from laboratory tests; (2) role of the microbiology laboratory in infection prevention and control, stewardship, and surveillance; and (3) reporting for public health.
• Identify sources of information and develop tools that can generate data/information about the potential public health threats in patients or the community.
• Support teams to conduct risk assessments: verify, using critical thinking, if a public health problem exists and describe its magnitude.
• Develop schedules, approaches, and tools for patient, community, and population-based risk assessment that can be easily adapted for respiratory diseases.
• Support the development and/or implementation of easy-to-use and adapting tools and or support the interpretation of disease and public health events trends from time series analysis, generating key findings from surveillance data analysis and drawing conclusions by surveillance teams and programs.
• Support the development of required case definitions, outbreak investigation, reporting, and mitigation actions as applicable.
• Support, implement, and report on epidemiological studies through the development of protocols using investigation techniques consistent with the public health problem, field implementation, analysis, reporting, and development of evidence-based interventions in response to epidemiological findings on recommended projects.
• Identify, adapt, recommend, support, and/or provide guidance on the use of various strategies and approaches to sampling, probability, inferential statistics, and predictive modeling.
• Collaborate and participate effectively and appropriately to ensure optimum functional interprofessional teams within various governance structures at different organizational levels,
• Implement approaches for estimating budget and resources consistent with strategies and adjust activities to remain within budget and resources.
• Participate in the development and preparation of funding proposals.
• Perform other functions as may be required.

Public health communication and guidance:

• Work with various teams to identify, review, and assess relevant literature, and generate evidence that can be shared with the public to promote, prevent, detect, respond to, recover, and mitigate public health issues and events.
• Develop evidence-based guidance, and or guidelines for surveillance, prevention, and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases and other acute public health events.
• Routinely access to identify, update, and recommend appropriate target groups to be reached with the various guidance developed or updated.
• Serve as a peer reviewer for various communication and publication materials including but not limited to commentaries, editorials, or reviews of articles that are prepared to address issues
• Develop, contribute to, or lead a workshop or professional meeting or meeting section
• Develop, and review fact sheets for dissemination at in meetings, publishing in peer-reviewed journals, or updating web content to facilitate knowledge sharing

Capacity Development in Epidemiology:

• Demonstrate a commitment to reflective learning, as well as the creation, dissemination, application, and translation of Epidemiology knowledge through training, mentoring, and coaching
• Develop and provide project teams with training and mentoring on approaches for conducting epidemiological studies.
• Develop and conduct training.
• Serve as a mentor to assigned interns and fellows.
• Participate in any other capacity development efforts as assigned.

Requirements and Qualifications

• A University Degree in Medical Sciences (MBBS / B.Pharm.), Behavioural / Social Sciences, Public Health, Demography, Biostatistics, Statistics, or any health-related relevant field and must have attained a master’s degree in public health specializing in Epidemiology. A Ph.D. in Epidemiology will be an added advantage.
• At least 5 years of providing technical assistance to a national or subnational level in a public health Surveillance Unit preferably in sub-Sahara Africa.
• Comfortable with a team approach to programming and the ability to manage several major activities simultaneously.
• Abilities: Strategic and analytical thinking skills with the ability to solve problems, make decisions, manage multiple tasks, prioritize, determine activities and projects towards measurable goals, and standard setting in collaboration with other team members.
• Interpersonal/Individual Competencies: the ability to work with other team members, flexibility, decisiveness, and personal integrity.
• Experience with quantitative and qualitative public health survey methodologies will be an added advantage.
• Proven training and mentorship experience