Epidemiologist, Research Associate, Malaria Analytics, Surveillance, and Technology, Anglophone East and West Africa at Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)

Overview Of Program And Role

• CHAI’s global malaria and neglected tropical disease (NTD) program provides direct technical and operational support to countries around the globe to strengthen their programs and reduce the burden of preventable, treatable diseases. We support governments to scale up effective interventions for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance, with the goals of sustainably reducing the number of illnesses and deaths worldwide in the short-term and accelerating progress towards elimination of malaria and NTDs in the long term.
• CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with public health experience and analytical skills to work with CHAI’s global, regional and country teams, as well as with government counterparts to assess, design, and scale-up disease surveillance systems; conduct epidemiological analysis, monitor and evaluate the success of ongoing efforts to reduce disease burden in relevant geographies; and translate results for decision-makers.
• The individual will collaborate with a diverse team based across multiple countries across East, West and Central Africa, with a focus on Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, as well as with government programs, academic partners and public health agencies.
• The successful candidate will possess strong communication and organizational skills; be imaginative, pragmatic, and innovative in applying epidemiological expertise to improve real-world health programs; work independently to drive implementation; and have deep personal commitment to producing results.

Responsibilities

• Implement surveillance projects related to disease (malaria and NTD) epidemiology, intervention, commodity and entomology, as required;
• Provide direct support to analytics workstreams including conducting high-quality epidemiological analyses to evaluate effectiveness of current interventions, understand disease patterns, and inform strategic planning related to malaria within the region;
• Support the rollout and monitor the performance of existing and new surveillance processes and platforms for improved data collection, reporting, data management, automated analysis and data visualization e.g. using dashboards;
• Help cultivate a culture of data use within disease programs by strengthening the quality, use and analysis of epidemiological, entomological, and programmatic data by the malaria program to inform country strategy planning and program implementation;
• Support institutionalization of data reviews at all levels, including the development and use of data collection tools and dashboards (e.g., Tableau, DHIS2, etc.);
• Contribute to the formulation of relevant disease program documents including but not limited to surveillance guidelines and SOPs, M&E plans, lessons learned documents and operational manuals;
• Design, implement, analyze, and disseminate operational research projects related to surveillance, intervention effectiveness, and entomology;
• Provide technical support, training and ad-hoc programmatic support to staff members involved in surveillance activities such as data quality assurance and management, monitoring and evaluation of existing activities, outbreak detection and responses, surveillance system evaluation, integration of health management information system, and study implementation;
• Synthesize results, translate them to national and sub-national government partners 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 with local academic and technical partners;
• Develop and maintain strong working relationships with country teams, key stakeholders across government, non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions, with support from senior research associate and technical advisor;
• Any other tasks as assigned.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in public health, Epidemiology or related field;
• 2 years of working experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership, including in program management;
• Strong project management skills, including the ability to plan, execute, and monitor multiple projects simultaneously, ensuring timely and high-quality deliverables;
• Knowledge of malaria, NTD and/or other major global infectious disease problems;
• Experience in monitoring and evaluation of surveillance systems and/or public health programs;
• Familiarity with disease surveillance and strengthening information systems;
• Familiarity with data entry, data management, epidemiological analysis and statistical analysis using statistical software (R, STATA and/or other relevant software);
• Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems focusing on malaria and/or other major global infectious disease concerns;
• 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;
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills;
• Willingness to travel (50% of time); and
• Fluency in English.

Advantages

• Experience working in fast-paced, output-oriented environments;
• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings, especially in Africa;
• Experience working with a decentralized team;
• Experience in programming (e.g., Python, JavaScript), working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g. ODK and Survey CTO) and/or data visualization applications (e.g., Tableau, PowerBI, Metabase).