Research Associate, Epidemiologist, Central America

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.

Overview of Role:

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with experience in disease surveillance systems, data analysis and public health research. This individual will assist with malaria surveillance system design and implementation, data analysis, mapping activities, and operational research studies to support malaria elimination in Central America. Support will focus on three countries in the region: Panama, Guatemala, and Honduras. The aim of this support is to ensure that national malaria programs and ministries of health  are using robust evidence to inform their strategic and operational decision making. Strong communication and organizational skills are needed as s(he) will work closely with CHAI's Global and Regional Malaria Teams, and will help to translate epidemiological evidence to malaria programs and other partners in country. Further, it is expected that the Research Associate will need to collaborate with other academics and public health agencies to ensure CHAI's elimination work is complementary and not duplicative.

• Assisting to monitor and evaluate the performance of surveillance platforms;
• Supporting the implementation of new surveillance platforms for improved data collection, data management, analysis and data visualization;
• Designing and facilitating operational research projects: identifying knowledge gaps, defining research questions, protocol development, survey and sampling design, formulating training material, training and monitoring survey data collectors, data management, analysis, and dissemination;
• Collating, organizing and merging available data, assessing its quality and suitability for analysis such as hypothesis tests, linear and multiple regression, spatial analyses and risk mapping;
• Analyzing geographic data with GIS software including mapping malaria incidence and intervention coverage;
• Translating results to national and sub-national government partners to support evidence-based decision making;
• Assisting with the development of operational plans to support malaria case detection, case management and vector control activities;
• Synthesizing results and communicating them internally and externally at international venues;
• Disseminating findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications;
• Performing scientific literature review as needed; and
• Any other tasks identified.

• Master's degree strongly preferred in Public Health, Epidemiology, or related field; or Bachelor's degree with exceptional experience
• 2+ years of related working experience;
• Knowledge of malaria and/or other major global infectious disease problems;
• Experience in disease surveillance and strengthening information systems;
• Experience conducting and managing epidemiological surveys;
• Experience in the epidemiological and spatial analysis of disease data;
• Statistical and geospatial analysis programming experience (R, SAS, STATA, ArcGIS and/or other relevant software);
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications;
• Ability to work independently in unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges;
• Has applied research methods to address global health problems;
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills;
• High level of proficiency in Spanish; and
• Willingness to travel within the Central American region (40-50% of the time).

 Advantages:

• Experience working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g. ODK) and/or data visualization applications (e.g. Tableau);
• Experience working and communicating with government officials and multilateral organizations;
• Experience living or working in resource-limited countries; and
• Experience working remotely with a decentralized team.