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.

Program Overview:

Maximizing the public health impact of primary healthcare (PHC) systems, in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3, “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,” means ensuring quality services are accessible to all. An understanding of the geographic distribution of populations, disease burden, health care resources, and infrastructure is intrinsically part of this health care delivery goal.

The GRID3 (Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development) project was initiated to improve quality and completeness of digital geospatial data, working in collaboration with countries (grid3.org). Data collection integrates country-level and even community-level knowledge with the latest technical approaches, including machine learning, to produce fine-scale, precise mapping products. Data are non-proprietary, open-source, and include settlement mapping that is augmented in select countries by additional population, boundary, and infrastructure mapping. The GRID3 datasets have been applied usefully to campaign-based health delivery, such as vaccines. The return on investment in the creation of this resource depends on the use of GRID3 data to solve country challenges and improve existing programs. Many countries continue to lack the resources, expertise, or awareness to advance use of available geospatial data for primary healthcare beyond the traditional approaches of population censuses. Over the next two years, CHAI will support national and local governments in countries across Africa to test GRID3 data as a tool to improve primary healthcare outcomes by adopting them into PHC programs and across planning dimensions (e.g., health financing, health workforce, supply chain, service delivery) to define health catchment areas, identify underserved populations, optimize provision of health services at health facilities and in the communities, provide steady supply of commodities, allocate resources, and improve measurement of denominators and coverage.

Overview of Role:

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated Epidemiologist with strong public health and geography experience and analytical skills. This individual will be responsible for technical coordination and providing expert guidance and support in geospatial data management and analysis across all nine African countries included in this project. This individual will work closely with Country Team Associates and the PHC Analytics Advisor to assess use case feasibility and support implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and results dissemination. The Geospatial Epidemiologist will also be involved with capacity building where needed and will be accountable for the quality of datasets produced during the Project, ensuring data access, and effective results dissemination. This person will have technical experience working with geospatial data, exemplary GIS skills for visualizing spatial data, and ideally have experience working with governments in low and middle-income countries. It is expected that the epidemiologist will need to partner with other academics and public health agencies to ensure success of the project. CHAI places great value on relevant personal qualities including resourcefulness, tenacity, independence, patience, humility, and strong work ethic.

The Geospatial Epidemiologist will be a member of the Global Malaria Analytics, Surveillance, and Technology (MAST) team and will report to the MAST Technical Advisor. The MAST team at CHAI is a hub of epidemiologists and health informatics specialists dedicated to ensuring government decision-making is based on robust data-derived evidence and high quality, complete disease surveillance. The Geospatial Epidemiologist will work across all GRID3 program project countries and will be responsible for liaising closely with the GRID3 Program Manager, PHC Analytics Advisor, and Country Team Associates to provide expert guidance on use case identification and feasibility toward improvement of PHC systems.

• Provide expert technical guidance on identification of use cases for GRID3 data related to optimizing primary healthcare systems;
• Contribute to the prioritization and final selection of GRID3 use cases for testing by suggesting and developing criteria for a decision matrix on which GRID3 use cases will be most impactful;
• Ensure successful technical execution of GRID3 use case testing through data gathering (geospatial and health data), validation, management using GIS platforms, and conducting spatial analyses;
• Produce detailed, reproducible methodology descriptions, effective data visualization, high-quality maps, and technical interpretations, including conclusions and recommendations, for inclusion in final written reports;
• Build relationships with internal and external stakeholders and provide capacity building to country team and governments as needed in geospatial data maintenance and analysis;
• Collaborate with country teams, government programs, or other partners to effectively translate methods, results, and interpretations for a variety of audiences of varying technical backgrounds using appropriate mediums, such as PowerPoint or others;
• Promote the use of evidence-driven decision making, and the benefit of spatial data where appropriate, using robust, up-to-date analytical methods and tools;
• Support evaluation, documentation, and dissemination of results and lessons learned from CHAI’s work; and
• Any other tasks identified.

• Master's degree in Public Health, Epidemiology, GIS or related field;
• 4+ years of working experience related to the position in epidemiology and geospatial data;
• Experience validating geospatial data quality, triangulation between data sources, and quantitative epidemiological analysis using multiple data sources and software platforms;
• Experience teaching geospatial data management and analysis skills (1:1 or classroom);
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications;
• High proficiency and experience working with, visualizing, and communicating results using geospatial data (shapefiles, rasters etc.) in Google Earth, QGIS, ArcGIS and/or other relevant software;
• Knowledge of infectious diseases and major global health challenges;
• Ability to work independently in remote and unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges;
• Demonstrated capacity to thrive in a work environment where juggling parallel deliverables is the norm
• Enthusiasm for applying geospatial data to solve global health problems;
• Exceptional communication skills of scientific concepts to audiences of diverse backgrounds, including through data visualization, written reports or manuscripts, and oral presentations;
• Experience working and communicating with government officials and multilateral organizations;
• Willingness to travel to focus countries and other locations as relevant to work (15-25% of time).

Advantages

• Experience working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2);
• Experience working with a decentralized team;
• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings; and
• French or Portuguese fluency.

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