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.

Background

Malaria is one of the world’s most important causes of illness, death, and lost economic productivity. Over the past decade, dramatic increases in donor funding have facilitated scale-up of effective interventions to prevent, diagnosis, and treat malaria. This investment has successfully reduced the burden of malaria in many settings, and some countries have begun planning to eliminate it altogether. CHAI’s global malaria program provides direct management and technical support to countries around the globe to strengthen their malaria programs and reduce the burden of this preventable, treatable disease.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of over 20 infectious diseases that affect more than a billion people worldwide. These diseases typically affect the world’s poorest, including those living in remote, rural areas, urban slums, or conflict zones. Children are the most vulnerable. NTDs often overlap geographically with malaria, and most are similarly transmitted by vectors including mosquitoes, flies, or worms – meaning that they can be prevented through similar measures as those used to fight malaria. Today, the largest efforts against NTDs involve the delivery of preventive chemotherapy through mass drug administration.

Countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) are progressing towards malaria elimination, and their malaria programs will need to rapidly detect and effectively treat infections, map areas where malaria transmission persists, and tailor and target intervention packages according to local contexts. CHAI is working to help malaria programs across the region achieve their ambitious goals by providing operational and technical support to strengthen surveillance systems, improve evidence-based planning, better manage programs, and coordinate activities regionally.

Overview of Role

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with strong public health experience and analytical skills to serve as an epidemiologist and technical advisor to its teams across the GMS. This role offers a unique opportunity for a talented individual to apply epidemiological and analytical skills to guide the operations of a cross-country disease elimination program. The successful candidate will lead a small team of epidemiologists and mentor health information advisors working directly with government counterparts to assess, design, and scale-up disease surveillance systems; conduct robust data analysis; and monitor and evaluate the success of ongoing efforts to achieve malaria elimination.

The individual will collaborate with a diverse team of CHAI staff based across multiple countries (primarily but not exclusively in Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, India, and Papua New Guinea), government programs, academics, technology companies, and public health agencies. The successful candidate will possess strong communication, organizational, and management skills; work independently to drive implementation; have the potential to grow into a global health leader; and have deep personal commitment to producing results.

Regional Strategy

• Lead all the malaria and NTD surveillance, analytics, and technology work for the GMS and other geographies, as required
• Serve as an expert/technical advisor for epidemiological questions to CHAI’s regional team, country teams, and for senior leadership
• Support rigorous evidence-based planning of intervention deployment, and design and implement monitoring to evaluate effectiveness of current government interventions, and identify potential approaches or strategies to accelerate progress

Technical project management

• Lead and provide support regionally for data cleaning, statistical analyses, and the development and interpretation of malaria risk maps and stratifications
• Review and ensure high quality surveillance and analytics guidelines and SOPs, M&E plans, lessons learned documents, and operational manuals

Team management and partner collaboration

• Directly manage, onboard, provide technical mentorship, supervision, guidance, and training to a small team of junior and mid-level epidemiologists based across the region; provide guidance, direction, and mentorship to health information staff across the region
• Work directly with country teams and governmental staff to better integrate epidemiological, entomological, and programmatic data use and analysis into routine programmatic activities at all levels of the health system
• Cultivate and establish relationships with local academic institutions, NGOs (e.g. PSI, PATH), and regional organizations (e.g. WHO, APMEN) working on data analysis or surveillance to inform elimination goals, which may include management of contracts with external partners

Communication and knowledge management

• Manage and develop resources and best practices to share lessons across teams; synthesize and disseminate findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications
• Represent CHAI at external technical meetings, acting as the face of the organization to academic/technical partners within the region, including via the dissemination of findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications

• Master’s in public health, epidemiology or related field
• 5+ years of work experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership, including management experience
• Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems focusing on malaria and/or other major global infectious disease concerns
• Experience mentoring and managing junior technical staff
• Experience with designing, conducting, and analyzing epidemiological surveys
• Experience in evaluating, working with, and strengthening disease surveillance systems
• Experience in working and communicating with government officials and other external partners
• Exceptional skills in the epidemiological analysis of health data and the application of analyses for decision-making
• Statistical and geospatial analysis programming experience (including expertise with R, STATA, ArcGIS, QGIS and/or other relevant software)
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications
• Proficiency in report writing and other concise written communications
• Ability to work independently in remote and unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges
• Ability to collaborate and operate as part of a multi-cultural team
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills
• Willingness to travel extensively (40-50% of time)
• Fluency in English

Advantages

• Knowledge of malaria, NTD, and/or other major global infectious disease problems
• Experience in programming (e.g., JavaScript, Python) and/or working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g. ODK, SurveyCTO) and/or data visualization applications (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI)
• Experience working in fast-paced, output-oriented environments
• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings, especially in the Greater Mekong Subregion
• Burmese, Khmer, Laos, Thai, and/or Vietnamese language proficency