Senior Environmental Health Officer | Assosa

About Action Against Hunger

Action Against Hunger-USA is a global humanitarian organization that takes decisive action against the causes and effects of hunger. We save the lives of malnourished children and we enable entire communities to be free from hunger. With more than 8,000 staff in over 50 countries, our programs reached 17 million people in 2019.

About the Country Program in Ethiopia

Action Against Hunger has been operational in Ethiopia since 1984 responding to both chronic and acute needs through a multi-sectoral strategy where nutrition, Food Security and Livelihoods, WASH, and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support activities are integrated to have a meaningful impact on people’s resilience. Action Against Hunger currently operates in 5 different regions (Oromia, Somali, Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, and Gambella) with a portfolio of 20m USD/year of emergency, resilience building, research, and innovation programs. We have a country team of around 600 staff in 17 regional and satellite offices. Our main donors in Ethiopia in 2020/2021 are BHA, ECHO, Europaid, UNHCR, UNICEF, GFFO, BPRM, SIDA, EHF, WFP, CIAA, and others.

Summary of Position

The Senior Environmental Health Officer (SEHO) is responsible for leading the design, technical oversight, and quality assurance of environmental health interventions within the WASH program. This includes conducting comprehensive needs assessments, identifying and prioritizing critical environmental health gaps within communities, and reporting the proposed technical WASH response to the WASH Project Coordinator. The SEHO will monitor the implementation of environmental health activities, ensuring adherence to technical standards, national guidelines, donor requirements, and quality benchmarks.

A key responsibility is to integrate and advocate for innovative and evidence-based WASH approaches such as Baby WASH, WASH FIT, WASH Social and Behavior Change (SBC), and WASH in Emergencies (WASH-EM) into both programming and implementation. The SEHO will also lead the development and contextualization of SBC strategies and hygiene promotion materials.

Furthermore, the SEHO will facilitate and organize targeted capacity-building for community members, volunteers, and government environmental health workers, engaging with all relevant stakeholders to ensure the effective implementation, ownership, and sustainability of WASH responses. This role also involves representing Action Against Hunger in local level WASH coordination forums as required to foster strong integration within intervention areas and ensure alignment with public health priorities.

Purpose of the Position

The Senior Environmental Health Officer (SEHO) is responsible for integrating environmental health and public health principles into WASH programming to ensure sustainable, safe, and health-focused interventions. This role bridges technical environmental health aspects (water safety, sanitation infrastructure, waste management, environmental risk reduction) with public health-oriented WASH (hygiene promotion, disease prevention, and social behavior change). The SEHO ensures that WASH interventions are contextually appropriate, technically sound, and aligned with health and environmental sustainability principles, while also addressing public health risks, outbreak prevention, and community engagement.

Engagement

Internal:

• Works closely with the WASH Program Coordinator to ensure the effective integration of environmental health strategies into overall WASH programming.
• Collaborates with the Construction Supervisor to ensure seamless coordination between software (hygiene promotion, behavior change) and hardware (infrastructure, sanitation) components.
• Engages with the capital WASH team, particularly the Environmental Health Advisor, to align field interventions with broader organizational strategies and best practices in public health WASH and environmental risk management.
• Coordinates with MEAL, Logistics, Finance, and HR to ensure environmental health activities are well-supported, monitored, and documented.

External:

• Represents Action Against Hunger in local WASH cluster meetings, government coordination forums, and technical working groups as required, advocating for integrated environmental and public health-focused WASH interventions.
• Collaborates with local authorities, community representatives, and partner organizations to implement sustainable, community-led WASH interventions that address public health risks.
• Strengthens engagement with community-based structures (WASH committees, health extension workers, women’s groups, volunteers) to enhance hygiene promotion, behavior change, and environmental risk mitigation

Delivery (key performance indicators)

• Timely and high-quality implementation of environmental health interventions, including hygiene promotion, sanitation improvements, and behavior change initiatives.
• Effective monitoring and reporting on key environmental health and public health WASH indicators, ensuring compliance with donor and organizational standards and reporting requirements
• Strengthened coordination and community engagement, demonstrated by increased participation, improved local partnerships, and the sustainability of WASH initiatives.
• Integration of environmental health approaches within nutrition, health, and food security programs, promoting a holistic response to public health risks.
• Capacity building of project staff, community health workers, and WASH committees to enhance local ownership and sustainability of interventions.

Key responsibilities and objectives

Objective 1: Implementation & technical oversight

• Lead hygiene promotion, environmental health and risk assessments, and community mobilization to reduce public health risks
• Develop and implement behavior change strategies tailored to local contexts, addressing hygiene practices, sanitation, and disease prevention.
• Oversee the distribution, proper use, and impact monitoring of WASH NFIs
• Ensure the integration of gender-sensitive and inclusive WASH programming, prioritizing the needs of women, children, and vulnerable groups.
• Conduct water quality testing, sanitation assessments, and environmental health risk mapping, water safety planning to inform programming and policy recommendations.

Objective 2: Monitoring, reporting, accountability & learning

• Conduct regular field monitoring visits to assess effective intervention, identify gaps, and document best practices.
• Ensure timely collection, analysis, avoid duplications, and reporting of environmental health and hygiene data in collaboration with MEAL teams.
• Lead KAP surveys, post-distribution monitoring, and hygiene behavior impact assessments to measure program success.
• Document and share lessons learned, case studies, and success stories to enhance program effectiveness and inform future interventions.

Objective 3: Coordination & stakeholder engagement

• Actively participate in WASH cluster coordination meetings at woreda, zonal, and regional levels as required
• Strengthen cross-sector collaboration with health, nutrition, agriculture and education actors to maximize WASH impact on public health outcomes
• Support local authorities, institutions and community-based structures (WASH committees, HEWs, health facilities schools) in developing and implementing sanitation improvement plans including WASH FIT

Objective 4: Capacity building & team support

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to the community engagement facilitators and other WASH staff.
• Organize and facilitate training sessions on hygiene promotion, behavior change communication, and environmental health for community health workers and volunteers.
• Support local governance structures to improve sanitation, water management, disease outbreak and environmental health monitoring at the community level

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Construction Supervisor

Gender Equality Commitments

• Foster an environment that supports values of women and men, and equal access to information.
• Provide a work environment where women and men must be evaluated and promoted based on their skills and performance.
• Respect beneficiaries’ women, men, children (boys and girls) regardless of gender, sex orientation, disability, religion. race, color, ancestry, national origin, age, or marital status.
• Value and respect in all cultures.

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA)

• Beware of minimum operating standards of SEA
• Protect and prevent others from SEA.
• Report SEA.
• Strictly adhere and respect Action Against Hunger child protection and SEA policies.

Safeguarding Commitments

• Action Against Hunger has a zero tolerance to child safeguarding violation and SEA. Our selection process includes rigorous reference and background checks. Successful applicants will be expected to sign up and carry out their duties in accordance with our Child Safeguarding and PSEA policies.

Fiscal Responsibility

• N/A

Physical Demands

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is required to sit for long periods and to concentrate on work, including typing, and turn out heavy volumes of work accurately, within short time frames under stressful situations in the context of a moderately noisy office with many interruptions. Must be able to proofread own work accurately so that only minor corrections are needed on an infrequent basis.
• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Working Conditions, Travel and Environment

• The duties of the job require regular job attendance of at least five days per week. Must be available to work outside normal office hours or at the weekends as required.
• Must be able to travel as required for standard domestic and international business purposes. While performing the duties of this job in the field, the employee may be exposed to precarious settings under high security risks and/or very basic living conditions and outside weather conditions, as well as to infectious diseases.

Required Qualifications and Professional Experience

Education:

• BSc/MSc in Environmental Health, Public Health, Water Resource Management, or a related field.

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years of experience in environmental health, public health WASH, or hygiene promotion.
• At least 2 years in a supervisory or coordination role, preferably in humanitarian or development settings.
• Experience working in community-driven behavior change interventions

Required skills & competencies

• Strong technical expertise in hygiene promotion, environmental health risk assessment, water safety planning, and sanitation improvement
• Experience in designing and implementing behavior change strategies using participatory and community-led approaches
• Knowledge of water quality testing, vector control, environmental sanitation, and emergency WASH responses
• Proven ability to coordinate with government, humanitarian actors, and local stakeholders
• Proficiency in data collection, analysis, and reporting tools relevant to WASH programming
• Fluency in English; knowledge of local languages is an advantage.