Surveillance Specialist

Monday, January 4, 2021

ABOUT MAKSPH-METS

The Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH)-Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Support (METS) Program is a five-year (2020-2025) CDC-funded Cooperative Agreement. The MaKSPH-METS program emerged out of the growing recognition of the importance of evidence-based decision making for an AIDS Free Generation in Uganda. The overall purpose of the Program is to establish coordinated and effective national and district systems for the management of strategic information for a robust HIV response.

JOB TITLE: SURVEILLANCE SPECIALIST

BASIC FUNCTION OF POSITION:

The incumbent will serve as the surveillance systems specialist and coordinator seconded to the CDC Uganda COVID-19 project team. The position is responsible for assisting the CDC Uganda and partners in the successful implementation of several routine surveillance, sentinel surveillance, and epidemiologic data projects. The incumbent serves as the primary liaison between the CDC Uganda team and the Ministry of Health (MOH), the Public Health Emergency Operations Center (PHEOC), other Government of Uganda (GOU) entities, and other governmental and non-governmental partners as stakeholders in these projects. The incumbent focuses on communication, project management and project oversight to ensure active collaboration between stakeholders across multiple surveillance projects based on an overarching integrated surveillance strategy.

MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: % OF TIME (50%)

Coordination of Uganda Surveillance Projects.

The incumbent will serve as a primary point of contact for a variety of surveillance projects being supported by US Government COVID-19 response funds including design, implementation and monitoring of supporting information systems and data structures. The surveillance projects include but are not limited to routine case-based surveillance for outbreak-prone diseases, Acute Febrile Illness (AFI) sentinel surveillance, Severe Acute Respiratory Illness or Influenza-like Illness (SARI/ILI) sentinel surveillance, mortality surveillance, and event-based surveillance. The incumbent will proactively liaise with CDC program personnel, GOU entities, and other data and laboratory science partners to facilitate awareness, planning, coordination and implementation of surveillance projects as directed by the CDC Health Informatics Team Lead and/or the CDC Uganda COVID-19 response lead.

The incumbent will ensure coordination between CDC Uganda and relevant stakeholders for surveillance project activities by participating in relevant MOH, PHEOC, and Uganda National Institute of Public Health meetings, and by keeping leadership and subject matter experts abreast of activities, progress and challenges. The incumbent will maintain project protocols and plans as well as contact lists of all relevant partners and stakeholders, and will routinely schedule, organize, and host meetings with stakeholders and project team members to ensure forward progress on all projects.

 

Technical Assistance and Reporting (35%)

The surveillance specialist is expected to have a broad knowledge of surveillance methodologies and will need to stay updated with the current Ugandan and global guidelines for detecting, reporting and managing cases of outbreak-prone diseases. The position is also responsible for staying abreast of the key components of the Ugandan public health system engaged in surveillance including health facilities, supporting laboratories and specimen transport networks and the roles they play in surveillance for disease and outbreak detection from local to national levels. The position requires maintaining current knowledge of Ugandan national disease reporting requirements including required data elements, periodicity, case definitions and outbreak thresholds. This knowledge is required for both surveillance system design and data management planning for individual projects and across the overarching integrated surveillance system. As a seconded staff, the incumbent may be requested to represent CDC Uganda on surveillance related project working groups, meetings and other fora as necessary. The incumbent serves as a liaison for surveillance projects with CDC subject matter experts based in Uganda, other country offices and Atlanta, other USG agencies (USAID, DOD, State Department, NIH, etc.), the Uganda Ministry of Health and other relevant GOU stakeholders, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Under the direction of CDC and in collaboration with Ministry of Health (MOH) and partners, the incumbent participates in identifying and prioritizing surveillance activities in order to strengthen national and district-level public health response capacity. The surveillance specialist will provide technical assistance in coordination with subject matter experts to develop and strengthen public health surveillance systems in Uganda. The incumbent will proactively identify training, mentorship, and technical assistance needs to sustain progress made on surveillance systems in country. The incumbent also provides technical assistance to the CDC Uganda office and its GHSA implementing partners (IP) on public health surveillance program planning and implementation. The incumbent supports the development of partner program activities, strategies, and workplans to meet broader surveillance programmatic objectives. Duties also include the identification and sharing of key system and data elements and system solutions for sharing across projects and implementing partners to help standardize methods and systems contents supporting data integration and exchange.

The surveillance specialist prepares required quarterly, semi-annual, annual progress reports, and other ad hoc reports as requested. The position is expected to routinely monitor signals and alerts generated by the systems for data quality assessments including completeness, timeliness and utility for event detection. The Incumbent responds to informational requests and prepares program specific.

Administrative Management (15%)

The incumbent is responsible for providing oversight and monitoring budgets allocated to the surveillance projects. This includes reviewing budget requests for appropriateness, monitoring use of funds for adherence to proposed activities, ensuring quarterly pipeline reviews/budget status reports are completed, following up on irregular findings, providing advice for realignment of budgets, etc.

The incumbent maintains files and records pertaining to activities/programs for which they are responsible including final project plans and protocols and evolving project directional and management documents. The surveillance specialist will ensure that all project costs are tracked in detail for accountability and planning scale up or expansion. Program files include, but are not limited to, reports, meeting summaries and minutes, research determinations, panels, and awards, etc. The incumbent is responsible for data integrity and security of information in reporting databases, particularly pertaining to the protection of personally identifiable information (PII). Whenever possible, these records will be filed electronically for recordkeeping purposes.

Note: This position description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by incumbent. Incumbent will be required to perform other duties as assigned by the agency.

QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED:

Education: Masters (MPH, MSHP) degree or host country equivalent in Medicine, Public Health, Data Sciences, Nursing, Laboratory Sciences, Health Sciences or Epidemiology is required.

Prior Work Experience: The candidate should have at least 1 year of mid to senior level public health experience in a field directly related to public health surveillance, outbreak response, and/or field epidemiology is required.

Language Proficiency: (List both English and host country language(s) proficiency requirements by level and specialization) Level IV (fluent) English ability is required.

Required Knowledge and skills:

a. Job Knowledge: The incumbent must have knowledge and experience in at least three of the following: public health surveillance, field epidemiology, outbreak response, laboratory science, data science, and/or overall management of public health emergency response programs. General knowledge of the local surveillance management processes and/or systems and the role of the Uganda MOH and PHEOC in public health surveillance is preferred. The incumbent should have a good working knowledge of global public health surveillance methodologies.

b. Skills and Abilities: Position requires a highly innovative and well-trained public health professional with strong organizational skills. In addition, leadership and interpersonal skills to work with all levels of staff in a team setting to accomplish program goals is critical. A high level of oral and written communications skills is required in order to convey program progress, technical requirements and to influence other collaborative organizations engaged in surveillance projects and response programs to adopt appropriate strategies for their program activities. Strong working knowledge of computer software programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, data analysis tools, etc. is required. Experience using Office 365, MS Teams, SharePoint and other O365 programs and willingness to learn new technology is preferred. Ability to gather, analyze and interpret quantitative data, provide factual and interpretive reports and communicate findings to a variety of audiences is required. Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and effectively in a high-performance environment under tight deadlines is required.

The incumbent must also have skills in diplomacy in order to work effectively with the Ministries of Health (MOH), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), United Nations Disaster Assistance Coordination (UNDAC), Department of State (DOS), Embassies and international public health entities.

Term of position
This position is a temporary, 1 year full-time position. At the completion of a successful first year, there
will be an opportunity for an additional 1-year extension. The incumbent will be seconded back to the
US CDC in Uganda, but will not be an employee or either the US CDC nor the US Government.

 

APPLICATION PROCESS

i) Qualified and interested candidates are invited to submit the following application documents and a motivation letter clearly highlighting the position being applied for and address this to;

The Dean,

Makerere University School of Public Health,

College of Health Sciences, Makerere University,

P.O. Box 7072, Kampala, Uganda

ii) Application Documents

a) Motivational Letter

b) Resume with contacts of 3 professional referees

c) Copies of all relevant academic documents

iii) Soft copies of the applications should be submitted as one PDF file to the following email address mets@musph.ac.ug by 5:00pm on January 4, 2021.

 

Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.