The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI’s global malaria program provides direct technical and operational support to countries around the globe to strengthen their malaria programs and reduce the burden of this preventable, treatable disease. We support governments to scale up effective interventions for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance, with the goals of sustainably reducing the number of malaria-related illnesses and deaths worldwide in the short-term and accelerating progress towards malaria elimination in the long term.

The surveillance system is the backbone of any elimination program, providing information on where transmission is occurring, how interventions should be targeted, and tracking progress towards goals. Given the importance of geography and time for assessing and monitoring the health of populations at risk, Ministries of Health (MOHs) across Asia, Africa and Meso-America have initiated a process to geo-enable their health information systems. CHAI is supporting these efforts through the implementation of a common geo-registry (CGR) tool to host and provide national programs access to standardized master lists, associated hierarchies, and other geospatial data. In addition to a technical platform, CHAI is working with MOHs on governance structures, technical capacity, specifications, standards and SOPs, policies, resources, and use cases for the CGR. The vision is for all information systems in the target countries to use a consistent geography across departments to improve the specificity and effectiveness of public health burden reduction.

Overview of Role

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual to support government programs in the management of a common source of truth for geographic information. The Associate will liaise between government stakeholders, software developers, and geographic information specialists to advocate for and deploy an information system (“Common Geo-registry” or CGR) to host common geographic information across health and non-health departments. Furthermore, the Associate will work with government stakeholders to provide valuable feedback to the CGR platforms to ensure fit for purpose.

This work will include supporting government programs in strengthening capacity to manage geospatial data, managing multiple complex stakeholders, driving rigorous implementation plans, designing deployment guidelines and resources, capturing and sharing lessons learned

across countries, and supporting countries on use of geospatial information to enhance malaria control activities.

A successful candidate will need to possess exceptional communication, organizational, and management skills as well as be able to work independently to drive implementation in complex environments and have deep personal commitment to producing results. CHAI places great value on relevant personal qualities including resourcefulness, tenacity, independence, patience, humility, and strong work ethic.

Responsibilities:

Cultivate opportunities to implement a CGR in Myanmar (70%)

• Engage the Myanmar Ministry of Health and Sports (MoHS) and in country stakeholders to promote and develop a vision for the geo-enablement of their health information systems.
• Draft a detailed country assessment and implementation plan to inform the deployment of a CGR and capacity building to manage geospatial data in a CGR.
• Support the deployment, technical setup, and population of the CGR, including the integration of MoHS information systems with the CGR and set-up of long term maintenance systems
• Support the generation of master lists of health-related geo-objects to serve as a source of truth across government programs. Develop or update standard operating procedures as needed to use the data in the CGR for public health activities.
• Support the creation and development of interoperability standards across systems.

Development of implementation guidelines and advocacy material for deployment of a CGR in other countries (20%)

• Capture lessons learned from country implementations including user needs, implementation best practices, and M&E results.
• Manage and develop resources to enable rapid deployment of a CGR including user testing protocols, SOPs for data collection and management, support system guidelines training collateral, hosting and maintenance options
• Support the development of an online knowledge base for the CGR including a resource hub and global sandbox environment to facilitate demonstrations of the CGR platform
• Develop communications materials and participate in relevant global meetings to advocate for the use and deployment of a CGR to support public health initiatives including malaria elimination
• Engage global stakeholders and multilateral agencies on opportunities to strengthen global geospatial information management through the deployment of a CGR

Project management and operational support (10%)

• Update project team and partners on implementation progress
• Operational support for other Health informatics initiatives in the Greater Mekong Subregion as needed

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Bachelor or Master's degree in geography, epidemiology, information management, or related fields with 3+ years of working experience in a relevant role

• Proven experience managing complex projects, with multiple stakeholders from different backgrounds

• Experience in communicating technical concepts to non-technical users, and preparing and presenting PowerPoint presentations for advocacy purposes

• Experience in establishing and managing partnerships with Government, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), United Nations (UN), or Multilateral Organizations

• Experience in conducting literature review, drafting technical reports or manuals and conducting stakeholder interviews

• Familiarity with essential geographic information management concepts and terminologies, and experience in using GIS software

• Experience working in a fast-based entrepreneurial environment, with demonstrated ability to work with a sense of urgency and in high pressure situations

• Exceptional project management skills and proven ability to execute complex technical projects in short timeframes

• Ability to work well both independently and as part of a multidisciplinary team

• Ability to think strategically and anticipate future consequences and trends

• Strong work ethic, integrity, credibility, and dedication to CHAI’s mission

• Ability to travel approximately 30% of the year

Advantages

• Experience managing (collection/extraction, processing, validation, cleaning, maintenance, linkage, databasing) different types of geographic data (vector and raster), including field-based and desktop geodata capture

• Experience in implementing technology-based solutions with users

• Understanding of disease surveillance with knowledge of global health issues and/or common health information management systems

• Knowledge of Health Information Standards of Interoperability

• Familiarity with open-source mapping platforms such as OpenStreetMaps and knowledge of geospatial contents of the UN’s Humanitarian Data Exchange Platform (HDX)

• Experience in Microsoft Excel data cleaning/analysis using pivot tables, fuzzy matching, power query

• Experience working remotely with a decentralized team

• Experience working in an international context, including experience living or working in resource-limited settings

• Fluency in Burmese language

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