Health Specialist (Emergencies) at UNICEF

How can you make a difference?

Preparedness and response to public health emergencies in the eastern and southern Africa region

• Monitor public health events in the region, follow up notification and response with countries, HQ and partners, ensuring that information on the events is updated and shared with relevant parties as needed.
• Support UNICEF country offices in the development/updating on health emergency work planning, contingency planning processes with other sectors to ensure cross sectoral response programming and resilience building and other relevant documents as needed.
• Support development and review of health emergencies related resource mobilization proposals and reports, relevant TA and funding applications documents as needed.
• Conduct country support missions as part of the first line of regional response to public health events and/or in response to TA requests/ joint preparedness and performance monitoring including for accelerated disease control initiatives

Technical assistance for COVID-19 vaccine roll-out

• Collaborate with the Regional Immunization team to facilitate smooth COVID-19 vaccine roll out in ESAR countries including but not limited to resource mobilization, monitoring, identification and addressing bottlenecks in countries and providing technical assistance as required for planning and reporting.
• Monitor vaccine roll out in humanitarian settings, identifying bottlenecks and collaborating with the Regional immunization team to support countries to address them.
• Lead the development of technical updates and documents for use by ESAR countries with respect to implementation in humanitarian situations including using integrated approaches and existing emergency mechanisms.
• Contribute to enhanced coordination through engagement with the ESA COVID-19 vaccine deployment working group, country support team of the global COVID-19 vaccine deployment partnership, and any other coordination mechanisms related to the implementation and monitoring of COVID-19 vaccine introduction and roll out.

Maintain internal and external collaborations and partnerships

• Support coordination of the UNICEF ESARO cross sectoral public health emergencies group in response to new and emerging events.
• Support review of ESARO supported COVID-19 related mechanisms and collate lessons.
• Support coordination of UNICEF cross sectoral participation in the following external regional health emergency coordination platforms including:
• COVID-19 ESA coordination forum (health partners’ group; technical working groups);
• Regional Economic Communities technical PHE support to EAC, SADC, IGAD as requested/based on developing partnerships
• Africa CDC partnership – regional and RCC level coordination on PHEs in line with the UNICEF-Africa CDC framework. 
• Ad-hoc relevant coordination forums/mechanisms

Capacity building

• Provide carefully curated public health emergency guidance, reports and other information to all country focal points, health managers and chiefs of health as needed.
• Develop the expression of interest for national health specialists/officers, and the PHE consultancy roster and review, assess, and recommend candidates for selection.  
• Support the completion and rollout of the PHE toolkit in priority countries.
• Support the development of the Maternal newborn health package for humanitarian settings.
• Compile and update a package for cholera response capacity building in collaboration with WASH and social and Behaviour change regional focal points.

Knowledge management

• Analysis and risk informed planning: Lead the deployment of the public health emergencies risk analysis in selected countries in collaboration with country health teams and use the findings to develop health sector emergency preparedness and response plans with subnational level analysis and outputs.
• Technical guidance: Provide technical support to UNICEF country offices and partners including contributing to the development/adaptation of or sharing relevant standards, protocols, guidelines and training materials for public health and health in humanitarian crises.  
• In collaboration with WASH and social and behavior change, conduct a regional stock take and review of the ESARO Cholera Strategic Framework 2017-2020 and update as necessary.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have

Education:

• Advanced university degree in public health (MSc or PhD), plus degree in health field (MD or other related health discipline).

Experience:

• A minimum of 8 years of progressively responsible experience in public health, with field experience in responding to health emergencies. This includes coordination & partnerships, risk assessments, planning, programming, implementation monitoring and evaluation of public health emergency programs relevant to communicable disease control. Within disease control, expertise mainly in: viral haemorrhagic diseases; vaccine preventable diseases; epidemiology & surveillance; International Health Regulations including JEEs/country core capacity assessments.
• Experience with UNICEF and other agencies/NGOs in emergency settings agency, and/or INGOs.
• Country work experience in the region with work experience in a district health system is an advantage.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English is required.
• Knowledge of French or Portuguese (a working language in some ESA countries) is an asset