Research Assistant at Malaria Consortium

Project Background

• PMC is the administration of a full therapeutic course of Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (SP) to provide personal protection against malaria where transmission rates are moderate-to-high and parasite resistance to SP is not high.
• Under the current WHO guidelines, -SP-PMC is delivered to children <2years old. PMC is safe, cost-effective, well accepted by health workers and communities, and has been found to reduce clinical malaria by 30%, and episodes of anaemia by 21% among the infants.
• Despite the WHO recommendation, there has been no significant uptake of the policy/strategy in Africa till date.
• The intervention is not yet adopted as one of the interventions in the Nigerian Malaria Control Policy.
• A rapid assessment of stakeholders’ perspectives on barriers to PMC policy uptake in Nigeria revealed that providing evidence on feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the intervention at the field level will be key for policy uptake.
• Malaria Consortium received funding to carry out an effectiveness-implementation hybrid study project on the feasibility and effectiveness of PMC in Nigeria.
• It is aimed at generating the required evidence to inform policy and possible scale-up of PMC in Nigeria and ultimately contribute towards a reduction in under-5 mortalities in the country.
• The project – a four-year commitment which became effective on the 1st of November 2020 – is being carried out in Osun State. It is a hybrid design aimed at evaluating the effectiveness as well as the feasibility of delivering PMC through the essential programme on immunization (EPI) platform.

Rationale:

• The PMC strategy is novel in Nigeria, and the implementation and data recording are taken for the first time by the health workers.
• Since this is a study, whose outcome promises to inform policy adoption, there is a need to ensure availability of data for evaluating the impact of the intervention.
• The research assistants will be tasked with extracting data from OPD register in sentinel health facilities and IPC registers from private health facilities for rebound phase and more for better project data management outcomes.

Purpose of the assignment
Overall Objective:

• To support reporting of SP-PMC Effect study data from the implementing health facilities to the National Malaria Data Repository (NMDR) and ensure the reporting of quality data to NMDR.

Specific Objectives:

• To extract monthly Outpatient department (OPD) data in sentinel health facilities and private health facilities for under-5 children and ensuring timeliness and completeness of data reporting
• To extract monthly all-causes of hospitalization data from inpatient care registers (IPC) such as severe malaria etc. in private health facilities
• To complete any data extraction gap for the PMC project in sentinel health facilities (control and intervention arms) and private health facilities.
• To validate and identify data quality issues and address /escalate them for real time corrective actions.

Description of Assignment
Methodology:

• Twenty research assistants will be recruited and trained for two days for PMC data extraction and reporting from the OPD and IPC registers.
• The RAs will be deployed to work in the eight implementing LGAs, to extract data in 80 implementing Health Facilities (forty intervention, forty control HFs and thirty-nine private health facilities).
• Data from each Health facility will be extracted completely before moving to the next health facility.
• Each research assistant is expected to extract and submit a minimum of 60 entries/records on daily basis.
• DHIS2 application will be used to extract and upload data to NMDR. Each Research Assistant will be engaged for 15 days between September to October 2026.
• Payment will be processed in phases: phase one after seven working days and phase two after eight workings days upon meeting the minimum deliverables requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Support monthly data collection and reporting by health facilities.
• Extract data from OPD and IPC in intervention, control and private HFs.
• Electronically extract data for under-5 children visiting OPD and IPC department, on malaria and any other health related issues data from the sentinel and private HFs using designated data collection app (DHIS2 app)
• Support data validation for rebound phase in the health facilities under consideration across the 8 LGAs.
• Hold onsite review meeting with the M&E Specialist, the State Project Manager and State Implementation Officer
• Deliverables.
• Monthly electronic data extraction from OPD (sentinel health facilities) and IPC registers (private health facilities) in HFs their respective LGAs
• Extract all data for rebound phase and fill data extraction gap for PMC project
• Daily facility-level electronic reports
• Any other duties assigned (Previous OPD and IPC data)

Experts Profile
Education:

• HND or bachelor’s degree in health sciences, humanities, or social sciences.

Experience:

• Familiarity with Osun State geography and culture.
• Prior work with primary healthcare facilities workers as an independent research assistant
• Experience in EPI activities, routine immunization, and data validation.
• Excellent experience in OPD and IPC data extraction using electronic apps.

Skills:

• Ability to understand and identify OPD and IPC variables for correct data extraction and to ensure data quality dimensions are not undermined.
• Strong interpersonal communication.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint).
• Skilled in electronic data collection, entry, and collation.
• Ability to use structured checklists.