Senior Child Health, Nutrition & Malaria Clinical Advisor at Palladium Group

Ref No: req14658
Reports to: HMIS Specialist

Project Overview and Role

• The Senior Child Health, Nutrition and Malaria Clinical Advisor will manage clinical aspects of the child health, nutrition, immunization and malaria portfolio from the Abuja Country Office. The position works closely with the Senior Integrated Community-based Health Technical Lead who manages community-based volunteers (e.g., CHIPS) and private sector (e.g., Private Patent Medical Vendors, Community Pharmacists) relationships and technical areas.  The position reports to the Deputy Chief of Party.
• The Senior Child Health, Nutrition and Malaria Clinical Advisor will be responsible for providing clinical technical leadership in child health, malaria, and nutrition at health facilities (PHCs, secondary hospitals, and private health facilities) supported by IHP.  This will include oversight of capacity building of referral hubs (one secondary hospital per LGA) to address severe childhood illness, such as severe malaria, severe pneumonia and severe malnutrition. It also provides mentoring and quality improvement oversight to primary healthcare facilities and select private health facilities within five targeted IHP-supported States (Bauchi, Kebbi, Sokoto, Ebonyi and FCT).
• The position will be based in the Abuja County office (ACO) and will liaise with State Technical Directors. The position requires providing support on child health policy, clinical guidelines development and development of training materials. It will also provide limited technical assistance to NPHCDA and FMOH at federal level.  The position provides child health and nutrition support to other technical staff and facilitates strong integrated service delivery at PHC levels, capacity building, clinical mentoring, and integrated supportive supervision.
• The Senior Child Health, Nutrition and Malaria Clinical Advisor will provide oversight and management to a project Community of Practice which brings together technical staff from across all IHP States, the Abuja Country Office, and Headquarters to address and mitigate challenges, identify, and scale best practices. The position requires a degree in medicine and an understanding of how to use data and analytics to identify, design and execute action plans to improve targeted child health and nutrition indicators across the five States in a scaled fashion.
• The Senior Child Health, Nutrition and Malaria Clinical Advisor will be responsible for developing competency-based refresher trainings, scaled clinical mentoring and integrated supportive supervision strategies for PHC healthcare providers, secondary healthcare providers and LGHA supervisors.

USAID Integrated Health Program (IHP) in Nigeria:

• Nigeria Integrated Health Program 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. It has a strong emphasis on monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
• This program will work closely with state-level government officials to support state-level Strategic Health Development Plans, Annual Operating Plans and budgets, capacity building, and promote local ownership of interventions, systems, and results.
• Specific interventions will need to be tailored to local contexts and will be fully developed at state, Local Government Area (LGA) and ward levels.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities

• Provides technical oversight and strategic direction on clinical aspects of the child health (including but not limited to immunization, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, malaria, and nutrition services) with expansion of primary health care and private sector models and approaches for children and their families. The position liaises with other Child Health staff in Abuja and the States to expand high impact, evidence-based practices, as well as community health and community engagement in partnership with other IHP staff and partners.
• Advises on clinical quality improvement and quality assurance approaches of PHC services with the focus on integrated child health and nutrition, including the development of tools and resources for the delivery, scale-up, and documentation of high-impact interventions at facility and community levels in the public and private sector.
• Provides clinical leadership on routine immunization (RI) systems and integrated RI/child health approaches to minimize missed opportunities on uptake and use of services by newborns, children, and their families.
• Provides expert mentoring to State staff to enhance clinical capacity building, mentorship, and supportive supervision approaches of facility providers with an emphasis on scale up of high impact child health and nutrition services in the public and private sector.
• Provides quality improvement expertise and strategies to enhance quality of care indicators in the PHCs and General Hospitals related to routine immunization, IMCI, nutrition and malaria.
• Provides technical oversight for referral activities, ensuring that two-way referral systems are established and functional between the community and the PHC (liaising with Breakthrough Action) and the PHC and Secondary or Tertiary Hospitals).
• Supports the IHP learning agenda aimed at synthesizing and packaging learning from across all states across a range of child health and nutrition topics.
• Collaborates with the IHP malaria experts to ensure expansion of case management approaches for malaria, including malaria diagnostics and treatment. Liaises with the community IMCI expert.
• As needed, prepares technical papers, training materials, curriculum review and presentations for capacity building for child health, nutrition.
• Partner and Stakeholder Coordination and Advisory Services:
• Participates in relevant federal-level Technical Working Groups and provides support to the FMOH and in IHP states for updating child health and nutrition quality policies based on global, national, and IHP state needs.
• Liaises with commodity and supply chain experts within federal (as needed) and state authorities and will collaborate with other USAID-donor funded supply chain initiatives (e.g. PSM) to support RI and IMCI/iCCM commodities management.

Management:

• Contributes to annual work planning, training plans and quarterly reports and other required technical reports.
• Collaborates 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.
• Contributes 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.
• Evaluates program progress against deliverables on a quarterly basis
• With the Chief of Party and Deputy as well as the Senior Integrated Community Health Technical Lead oversees program design, implementation, quality assurance and monitoring of work plan in the targeted states.
• Coordinates with the other members of the technical team and NGO partners to develop and implement feasible facility and community-based approaches
• Performs other duties as assigned by supervisor which contribute to the achievement of program goals.

Required Qualifications

• The Senior Child Health, Nutrition and Malaria Clinical Advisor must be a physician and a proven leader in the field with senior-level management experience in public health programs.  S/he must be well recognized by the RMNCH community in Nigeria.
• The Senior Child Health, Nutrition and Malaria Clinical Advisor must be intimately familiar with the context in Nigeria and have in-country experience with USAID programs.

Additional qualifications include:

• An experienced Child Health, Nutrition or Community Health physician with not less than 10 years experience in Clinical services, with more than half in Pediatrics practice. He/she should have an MD and at least a Fellow of the National or West African Postgraduate Medical Colleges or equivalents in Pediatrics or Family Medicine.
• An MPH and Development Program experience would be added advantages.
• Demonstrated expertise in working directly with host-country senior government officials and policy makers in child survival and MNCH.
• Strong, demonstrated management skills.
• Experience working with host-country partners, organizations, and institutions
• Strong skills in design, implementation and monitoring of program components, e.g. services, training, integrated supportive supervision, clinical mentoring, patient counseling, advocacy and coordination.
• Demonstrated capacity to work with Nigerian experts and partners in developing technical materials and providing training to improve service delivery, advocacy and resource mobilization for expanding quality improvement of MNCH 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.