Job Openings at Palladium Group

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.

Nigerian nationals are strongly encouraged to apply. 

 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 anda 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 a
• 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.
• Experienc 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.

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Project Overview and Role:

The UK Support to Health transformation in Nigeria through the Lafiya Programme is a flexible, demand-led strategic partnership with the Nigerian Federal and targeted State governments designed to address equity, improve and sustain health outcomes for the most vulnerable States with the worst health statistics. The desired objectives of the programme included fostering an enabling environment for UHC policy reform and implementation, institutional management capacity building and health system strengthening. This required the full engagement and participation communities with a view to contributing to ending preventable maternal and new-born deaths. The programme operated at the Federal level; and geographically in five states of - Borno, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Yobe. Following the ODA cuts, from 0.7% to 0.5% and the spend review handrails, the FCDO reprioritisation and business planning exercise beginning in the last quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2021 the programme had to scale down some key interventions and consider reviewing the geographic scope going into the next financial years. The programme now focuses on contributing to two outcomes (1) Morbidity amongst women, newborns, children, and adolescents significantly reduced in targeted states; and (2) Covid-19 transmission and vaccine hesitancy reduced including improved plans and capacity for emergency preparedness and response in the targeted States:
Output 1: Advocacy & Accountability - Leadership and Governance of primary health care services structures or planning and delivery teams are functional in targeted states (through partnership)
Output 2: Adequate health workforce for primary health care including RMNCAH service delivery and BHCPF available and sustained in targeted states
Output 3: Health information management systems capacity to support decision-making for primary health care including RMNCAH and BHCPF service delivery in targeted states increased
Output 4: Health financing and public financial management to strengthen and sustain access to high quality and affordable primary health care in targeted states increased
Output 5: Health security and epidemic preparedness and response (EPR) plans developed and operationalized within the targeted states (by addressing social norms/behaviour change)
During FY22/23 Palladium seeks the short-term technical services from a suitably qualified expert to serve as facilitator and anchor technical support to focus LGA to ensure delivery of technical assistance implementation of programme and related GA plans and strengthen partnerships towards sustaining the gains of FCDO investment and scale up of best practices

Report to: State M&E officer/ State Technical Expert

Primary Duties and Responsibilities: 

Coordination

• The   LGA   facilitator will coordinate all the LGA level program implementation including advocacy to stakeholders, trainings, monitoring, and supervision of all LAFIYA supported activities, support PHC level HRH registry updates, ensure review meetings are held, and escalate issues that cannot be resolved at the LGA to the State Technical Expert for intervention and quick resolution.
• S/He will ensure supported LGA is  implementing  the  LAFIYA supported system strengthening and EPR micro plans and technically support CHIPs activities in accordance with the National Operational Manual and guidelines.

Technical

• Collaborate with other partners in CHIPS roll out in focus LGA with emphasis on BHCPF implementation and work with HRH consultants and state CHIPS focal person in strengthening the monitoring capacity of LGA CHIPS Program Desk Officers of focus LGA.
• With State Technical Expert, provide support to SPHCDA to strengthen the capacity of LGA teams and the Health Facility Managers prepare Quality Improvement & Business Plans, accurate & complete retirement for BHCPF funds, improve data quality and reporting.
• Support the LGA in training of CHIPS agent on demand creation, service provision and quality monitoring of ASRH services.
• Facilitate CHIPS and LGA teams to conduct monthly intensified defaulter tracking for zero dose, SBA and PNC in assigned LGA.
• Support the State Technical Expert in providing technical support for capacity strengthening of LGA LMCU teams and HCWs of focus LGAs on integrated Supply Chain Management (ISCM) and Health Logistics Management Information System to enhance quality LMIS data reporting.
• Support quarterly meeting of LGAs Health Team to track programs progress using the RMNCAEH+N score card.
• Support the roll out of the Ethical Social Financing model at community level in assigned LGA.
• Facilitate the conduct of sensitization and reactivation of EPR committees on their responsibilities in focus Local Government.

Operations

• The LGA coordinator are expected to collate and verify the attendance sheet. This entails line by line verification and conduct spot checks for paper attendance, and populate the information from the supporting documents in a required excel template.
• S/he will be responsible for preliminary onsite review of information/data in the field before documents are sent to LAFIYA office in Kano. This is to ensure that discrepancies are detected early, reported, and addressed immediately.
• S/he will collate other support documents that are necessary for payment.
• S/he will send payment schedule to the finance team, for further confirmation and revert to participants with issues that need follow-up.
• Any other duty as assigned by the State’s team.

Required Qualifications:

• First degree (or HND) in a relevant field
• Relevant post-graduation experience
• Experience working with a Health/Public Health organization.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office packages, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, internet navigation and Outlook.
• Previous experience in the use of electronic data monitoring systems.
• Previous experience working with FCDO funded programme(s) is an added advantage.

Desirable Criteria and Skills

• Previous training on the use of Mobile Technology for Health Development.
• Previous experience working with State Ministry of Health, LGA and LAFIYA program.
• Proven ability to work as part of a team and independently.
• Ability to work under stressful conditions, flexible and calm under pressure and willingness to be residential at assigned LGA.
• Fluency in English and local language is preferred.
• Training and supervision skills is preferred.

go to method of application »

Project Overview and Role:

The UK Support to Health transformation in Nigeria through the Lafiya Programme is a flexible, demand-led strategic partnership with the Nigerian Federal and targeted State governments designed to address equity, improve and sustain health outcomes for the most vulnerable States with the worst health statistics. The desired objectives of the programme included fostering an enabling environment for UHC policy reform and implementation, institutional management capacity building and health system strengthening. This required the full engagement and participation communities with a view to contributing to ending preventable maternal and new-born deaths. The programme operated at the Federal level; and geographically in five states of - Borno, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Yobe. Following the ODA cuts, from 0.7% to 0.5% and the spend review handrails, the FCDO reprioritisation and business planning exercise beginning in the last quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2021 the programme had to scale down some key interventions and consider reviewing the geographic scope going into the next financial years. The programme now focuses on contributing to two outcomes (1) Morbidity amongst women, newborns, children, and adolescents significantly reduced in targeted states; and (2) Covid-19 transmission and vaccine hesitancy reduced including improved plans and capacity for emergency preparedness and response in the targeted States:
Output 1: Advocacy & Accountability - Leadership and Governance of primary health care services structures or planning and delivery teams are functional in targeted states (through partnership)
Output 2: Adequate health workforce for primary health care including RMNCAH service delivery and BHCPF available and sustained in targeted states
Output 3: Health information management systems capacity to support decision-making for primary health care including RMNCAH and BHCPF service delivery in targeted states increased
Output 4: Health financing and public financial management to strengthen and sustain access to high quality and affordable primary health care in targeted states increased
Output 5: Health security and epidemic preparedness and response (EPR) plans developed and operationalized within the targeted states (by addressing social norms/behaviour change).

Primary Duties and Responsibilities: 

During FY22/23 Palladium under output 2 seeks the short-term technical services from a suitably qualified facilitator that can mobilise State MOH to improve HRH and SPHCDA to invest in the CHIPS programme and promote quality of care.

Reports to: States’ technical Lead 

Location:  The State HRH Consultant will be based in Maiduguri, Borno state

Deliverables:

• Support states to conduct stipulated HWFR update and advocate for efficient HRH management and improved service delivery with focus on BHCPF.
• Support the onboarding of state’s master trainers and support them in training more CHIPS agents.
• Advocate and support the onboarding, training, mentoring and performance of CHIPS agent to provide quality community-based preventive, selected curative services and complete referral to BHCPF facilities.
• Provide support to CHIPS focal person and LGA Teams to conduct monthly intensified defaulter tracking for zero dose and SBA in focus LGAs and support data quality review meetings at the LGAs for the community-based data with CHIPS in collaboration with HERON.
• Quarterly report (20 pages max) that details out the support provided to the state, highlights of the activities completed, technical assistance provided, changes, challenges, and lessons etc.
  
  Required Qualifications:

• Must be an experienced professional in the field of health systems strengthening and particularly exposed to HRH interventions.
• Demonstrable capacity to network and negotiates with key stakeholders across different sectors in support of health.
• Strong skills in health workforce planning and management/human resources forecasting, design, implementation and monitoring of program components; e.g. health systems strengthening, supportive supervision, advocacy and coordination.
• Experience with technical assistance for programs funded by FCDO and/or other donor programs in developing countries, with significant Northern Nigeria experience.
• Experience in coordination and collaboration of stakeholders including government agencies, host country governments and counterparts, and international donor agencies.
• Strong interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills in English required, working knowledge of Hausa and other local languages preferred.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Attention to detail and ability to perform multiple tasks and balance competing priorities effectively and efficiently often within a required timeframe.