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's Global Malaria and NTD Programs:

CHAI’s global malaria and neglected tropical disease (NTD) programs 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.

Cameroon Program Overview:

CHAI began work in Cameroon in 2007, with a focus on improving access to lifesaving HIV diagnosis, treatment, and care. CHAI helped the Ministry of Public Health to introduce and scale up pediatric and second-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) and improve laboratory systems to better diagnose the disease, including Early Infant Diagnosis (EID). Since then, CHAI has helped introduce point-of-care testing for HIV and innovative mobile health technology to improve turnaround time for EID results. We have helped to integrate EID, Viral Load (VL), and tuberculosis (TB) testing on one device, and we are working to increase access to newer and better medications for adults and children with HIV alongside the National AIDS Control Committee. CHAI had also supported the government in its efforts to save the lives of women and infants through mentoring of service providers and increasing access to long-acting contraceptives to help women safely plan their families. We have supported the government to introduce and scale up better treatment for severe malaria and are now helping to ensure that it is consistently available and properly used by health workers across the country.

CHAI recently initiated engagement with the Ministry of Public Health (MoH) in Cameroon through its National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). CHAI aims to build sustainable access to timely and high-quality information across relevant levels of the health system and help programs to routinely use data and generated analytics to inform programmatic and strategic planning and operations.

Overview of Role:

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual to work as an Epidemiologist to support surveillance and analytics activities in Cameroon. This individual will support national malaria control programs (NMCP) to measure and enhance performance of surveillance systems, analyze trends and drivers of malaria transmission, use data to inform strategic decisions, and monitor and evaluate interventions. The Epidemiologist will focus on Cameroon and work closely with government programs, academics, and public health agencies to ensure CHAI’s work is complementary and not duplicative.

A successful candidate will need to work with team members across CHAI’s Global, Regional and Country Malaria teams and will therefore need to possess strong communication, organizational, and management skills as well as be able to work flexibly, independently, and proactively to drive implementation and have deep personal commitment to producing high quality work.  We are keen to hear from people with the above attributes.  

This position will be ideally based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, with some in-country travels on country leadership approvals. This position will report to the Cameroon’s Program Manager for Malaria Access program.

Serve as a thought leader, manage, and implement analytical projects related to Malaria epidemiology, interventions, and surveillance, as required. Across countries and projects, the Associate will achieve these objectives by:

Surveillance support:

• Manage surveillance activities in the country, in coordination with the CHAI Malaria program team and with support from their manager
• Support development and review of national guidelines, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and training materials for malaria surveillance activities
• Measure performance and determinants of malaria surveillance systems and provide prioritized recommendations to address key gaps
• Support development, integration, and institutionalization of malaria information systems, including data collection tools and dashboards
• Support integration of data use and analysis in routine programmatic activities at all levels of the health system

Analytical support:

• Manage and coordinate analytical projects across different technical teams related to malaria epidemiology (e.g., drivers of transmission), targeting and evaluation of interventions (e.g., Indoor Residual Spraying, Insecticide-Treated Net distributions, health worker allocations), and surveillance (e.g., data quality audits)
• Provide high-quality analytical support to CHAI regional and country teams, government staff, and relevant partners, through the planning, implementation, and presentation of highly complex analyses
• Clean, organize, and merge available datasets and assess their quality and suitability for analysis
• Conduct statistical and spatial analyses (descriptive analyses, regressions, and other relevant methods)
• Translate analytical results to national and sub-national government partners, ensure data are used to inform strategic decisions, and influence program strategy
• Provide mentorship and review for team members conducting and synthesizing analytical work

Programmatic support:

• Perform scientific literature review on relevant topics as needed (e.g., surveillance methods, drivers of malaria transmission, intervention effectiveness)
• Formulate and deliver national and sub-national level training materials with a focus on analytical content (e.g., data management best practices, online data collection tools), and surveillance strengthening
• Develop and implement M&E plans for CHAI and program activities, including monitoring and evaluating the implementation of relevant Malaria interventions, and surveillance systems
• Ensure sustainability and country ownership of malaria surveillance and analytics activities by developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders across government programs, non-governmental organizations, and local academic institutions, with support from program manager
• Synthesize results and communicate them through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications
• Represent CHAI at external technical meetings within the country, and develop and document dissemination materials from these meetings
• Perform other duties that may be assigned by Program Manager

• PhD or Master's degree in Public Health, Global Health, Epidemiology, or related field
• 3+ years of working experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership
• Knowledge of malaria and/or other major global infectious disease problems
• Proven experience in strengthening disease surveillance and information systems
• Proven experience analyzing epidemiological and spatial data and synthesizing results for non-technical audiences
• Statistical and geospatial analysis programming experience (preferably R, STATA and/or QGIS)
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and web applications
• Experience working and communicating with government officials and multilateral organizations
• Ability to work independently in remote and unstructured settings, to adapt to new environments and challenges, and to recommend creative approaches to problem solving
• Ability to be effective, calm, and flexible in high-pressure situations, to handle multiple tasks simultaneously and to effectively prioritize
• Enthusiasm for conducting trainings and ensuring sustainability of program activities
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills
• A peer-reviewed publication history is highly desirable
• Fluency in English and proficiency in French (French fluency strongly preferred)
• Willingness to travel (up to 30 – 40% of time)

Advantages

• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings
• Experience working with a decentralized team
• Experience supporting development of strategic plans, policies, and guidelines
• Experience working with surveillance platforms (e.g., DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g., ODK) and/or data visualization applications (e.g., Tableau)

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