Contract type: Temporary Appointment, Consultant
Level: P-4
Location: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Seychelles
Categories: Health, Emergency
Seeking external candidates only
Contract Type: Temporary Appointment (TA) or Consultancy
Duration: 3 months to 364 days
Location: Countries based in Eastern and Southern Africa
Job Description
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
For every child, hope
Since two years, countries in the ESA region have experienced an alarming increase in the number of new, or re-emerging humanitarian emergencies, including public health (including Ebola, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, yellow fever, wild poliovirus, and Cholera), armed conflicts and natural disasters emergencies.
UNICEF ESAR has prioritized the critical need to support countries to rapidly scale up capacity to prevent, mitigate, and manage ongoing and anticipated emergencies as well as to enhance capacity for preparedness and response to these emergencies.
Purpose
The purpose of this external announcement is to attract suitable Integrated Outbreak Analytics Cell Manager candidates interested in working in any of the countries within UNICEF’s East and Southern Africa region to respond to emergencies for the next 36 months. The countries within each region are listed on the following website: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html.
How can you make a difference?
Key activities & duties
Support Ministry of Health (co-lead) Integrated Outbreak Analytics Cell. Under the MOH leadership, the IOA manager will be responsible for
1. Support the Ministry to setup an IOA cell within the incident management system, if one does not already exist. In this regard, to ensure that the cell will:
- Drive comprehensive, accountable, and effective public health and clinical strategies for outbreak management and control
- Produce data from multidisciplinary perspectives that can rapidly and systematically inform operational decisions
- Drive a holistic understanding of outbreak dynamics, and highlight the impacts of both the outbreak and response control interventions
- Advance mechanisms and methods for relevant, useful, and rapid evidence-generation
- Build, strengthen and scale-up sub-national and national, regional, and global capacity to conduct IOA
- Provide support via field deployment, remote assistance (analytics/helpdesk), technical and normative guidance, tool development or dissemination and online trainings.
2. Support the IOA MoH leadership to manage IOA Cell
- Bring together partners and collaborators, facilitate discussions, meetings and presentations as required
- Support on the identification of key IOA themes and studies over time
- When/if required support the development of an IOA workplan within the Ebola response strategy
- Support the tracking and development of IOA studies with different partners
- Work with MoH to ensure IOA cell can be sustainable as /if requested
3. Provide technical guidance to MoH and partners on key questions for IOA. This will involve:
- Unpacking outbreak dynamics, identify and support appropriate methods to collect and analyse data to answer questions
- Reviewing routine data from response pillars to monitor trends in outbreak, impacts of the outbreak and response and communities’ perceptions and practice over time to identify questions for further investigation
- Providing training and technical guidance to MoH and partners on IOA approaches and methods (in person, online, tools etc)
4. Support on data analytics (social epidemiological, statistics, R) based on data types and study questions
- Conduct routine analyses of social epidemiological data (qualitative, quantitative)
- Contribute to reflections around data analytics within other specializations (data science, modelling, anthropology etc)
5. Ensure that studies are robust and of quality through support to data collection (tools, methods) and analyses
6. Support the monitoring of evidence use across response pillars and actors over time
- Contribute to systematic review of IOA presentations, use of evidence (co-development) and ensure that this is being documented and tracked by MoH
- Support all IOA partners to ensure that results are presented in ways which are usable and used and that recommendations are documented across all pillars, response actors and support the MoH to identify the best mechanisms for doing so.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
Education-
- Advanced (master’s degree) university qualification in relevant field (social epidemiology, epidemiology, operational social sciences health research, public health). Experience in in data science (R, SPSS or other) will be an asset.
Work Experience-
- 8 years of progressively responsible professional work field-based (operational) experience at national and international levels working in humanitarian settings including in public health emergencies. Demonstrated ability to synthesize complex scientific content for multiple audiences and to develop capacity building tools. Proficiency in a range of applications including but not limited to: MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, NVivo/Atlas Ti, Epi Info.
Language Requirement:-
- Fluency in verbal and written English and/or French (depending on the country office’s official language). Knowledge of another UN language or a local language is an asset.
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: https://uni.cf/UNICEFValues
UNICEF competencies required for this post are…
- Nurtures, Leads and Manages People (2)
- Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (2)
- Works Collaboratively with others (2)
- Builds and Maintains Partnerships (2)
- Innovates and Embraces Change (2)
- Thinks and Acts Strategically (2)
- Drive to achieve impactful results (2)
- Manages ambiguity and complexity (2)
During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.
UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children.
The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.
UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.
All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.
Remarks:
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions.
Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF.
UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.
Deadline: E. Africa Standard Time