Country

Senegal

City

Dakar

Type

Full Time

Program (Division)

Infectious Disease - Global Malaria

Additional Location Description

Flexible to be based in other program countries in Africa, pending Country Leadership approval

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work in conjunction with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skillsets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Program Overview

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.

Surveillance and technology can play a catalytic role in achieving these objectives when properly designed, and implemented, and when the data is used. Developing a strong surveillance system enables the collection, collation, and reporting of high-quality data on epidemiology, case management and interventions. Coupling this with strong government-owned information systems can substantially improve data availability, quality, and access, reduce redundancies and inefficiencies created by parallel systems, and enable the generation of compelling analytics for data-driven decision making - collectively empowering malaria programs to implement more strategic evidence-based interventions while optimizing limited resources.  

Overview of Role

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual to lead health informatics priorities and harmonize digital health and surveillance activities across all program countries in Africa, ensuring Ministries of Health are equipped with the right data systems, indicators, and outputs for decision-making across malaria, NTDs, public health campaigns, and geo-spatial data management. They will manage regional Health Informatics teams to design and implement tailored recommendations aimed at strengthening government-owned surveillance and campaign systems in each country.

A successful candidate will need to possess strong leadership, communication, organizational, and management skills. They must exhibit a passion for results, a commitment to excellence, and a strong work ethic. CHAI places great value on the following qualities in its staff: resourcefulness, responsibility, patience, tenacity, humility, independence, energy, and work ethic.

This position will report to the Associate Director of Health Informatics.

Strategic Priorities

• Serve as a key advisor to internal teams, external partners, and Ministries of Health to identify context-appropriate strategies to improve surveillance and campaigns management across surveillance system design, technology design, implementation factors, and human capacity
• Ensure all country priorities and initiatives relating to health informatics are well grounded in surveillance principles and best practices of data collection, reporting, visualization and use, are aligned with broader national programmatic strategies and data use objectives/activities, and are designed for institutionalization and sustainability from inception
• Scope and develop strategic approaches, theories of change, and targeted outcomes and outputs for new areas of work; support new projects and teams in start-up phases

Project Oversight and Execution

• Oversee the execution of health informatics priorities and their intersection with surveillance and analytics; ensure priority goals and expected outcomes are achieved in a timely manner
• Problem-solve barriers to meeting programmatic objectives, including technical challenges, operational or implementation challenges, and political challenges
• Provide hands-on support for technical project management and execution as needed, including but not limited to requirements-gathering, solution design, developer management, system configuration, testing support, supervision support, and SOP development
• Help monitor, evaluate, and improve the performance of surveillance systems and processes
• Drive dashboard and routine data use initiatives across Africa; ensure dashboards are fit-for purpose, and that dashboards, data review meetings, and data use guides are user-targeted and increasingly institutionalized by the program

Team and People Management

• Manage and support the work of a regional team of ~7 Health Informatics Technical Advisors and Associates, including 2-3 direct reports; collaboratively set priorities with team and help coordinate work activities with program and country teams as needed
• Develop and mentor staff including health informatics associates and epidemiologists through routine coaching and mentorship, implementing strategies to troubleshoot areas of weakness, and providing opportunities for professional growth and development
• Cultivate and maintain strong working relationships with other CHAI teams to ensure cohesive collaboration, alignment on goals and priorities, and mutual trust
• Support recruitment and onboarding of new team members to ensure proficiency with technical concepts, program strategy, country priorities, and organizational culture

Communications

• Help draft and contribute to proposals, donor reports, and grant deliverables
• Lead documentation and sharing of findings, best practices, and lessons learned across countries on surveillance and health informatics topics both internally and externally
• Other tasks as required

• Master’s degree in relevant field (information systems, computer science, public health, epidemiology, etc.) required or Bachelor’s degree with equivalent experience
• At least 7 years of work experience with increasing levels of responsibility in roles designing and delivering technology solutions with users
• Enthusiasm for solving global health problems and strengthening government health systems
• Experience in evaluating, working with and strengthening disease surveillance systems
• Knowledge of global digital health concepts, ecosystem, and trends
• Exceptional problem-solving solving skills and analytical capabilities
• Experience in strategy development, project planning and implementation, and monitoring and evaluation
• Experience supervising and developing team members and direct reports
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including making persuasive presentations and written reports
• Ability to concisely communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to be effective, calm, and flexible in high-pressure situations, to handle multiple tasks simultaneously and to effectively prioritize
• Ability to work independently in unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges; ability to collaborate and work with a de-centralized multi-cultural team
• Ability to travel up to 40% of the year
• Fluency in English

Advantages

• Experience with common health information management systems and digital global goods (e.g., DHIS2, OpenLMIS, OpenSRP, CommCare, OpenMRS)
• Experience living or working in resource-limited countries
• Experience in data management (including managing databases) and data analysis
• Experience in system administration, server set up, and hardware management
• Experience working and communicating with government officials and multilateral organizations
• French and/or Portuguese proficiency

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