Internal and External VA: Health Specialist – Epidemiology and Disease Control at UNICEF

Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the Regional Advisor Health, the Health Specialist - Public Health Emergency will handle the following main responsibilities and tasks

• Preparedness and response to public health emergencies and humanitarian crises

• Contribute to the development and dissemination of weekly and monthly summaries of emerging and ongoing public health events including those with cross-border impact, with recommendations for UNICEF focus at country and regional levels.
• Contribute to key regional reports on major public health events (including drought, floods, and outbreaks such as measles, cholera, and VHFs) as needed.
• Be deployed to countries responding to major public health events to augment their capacity as needed/requested.
• Deploy the risk assessment tool to ESA-priority countries experiencing crises, contribute to improving/amend the tool for different contexts, and support for risk-informed planning and risk mapping including at the subnational level.

Contribute to the monitoring of surveillance activities in countries experiencing crises for timely decision-making in response and conduct visits to provide hands-on to country offices where required.

• COVID-19 surveillance and response monitoring

• Weekly monitoring of COVID-19 epidemiological trends at the global level, in Africa, and in the ESA region.
• Review, summarise and share the latest technical guidance and scientific research on COVID-19
• Contribute to the development of monthly updates on COVID-19 and other public health emergencies for management and other updates required by the Regional Health Advisor
• COVID-19 vaccine rollout support:
  • Monitor vaccine rollout in humanitarian settings, identifying bottlenecks and supporting the team (RO and CO) to address them
  • Attend planning, review, and other related meetings and support follow-up actions related to the implementation and monitoring of COVID-19 vaccine introduction and rollout with a focus on fragile settings
  • Support the RO team to develop periodic updates and document progress on the roll-out of the COVID -19 vaccine that includes up-to-date information on countries in crisis

• Ebola Virus disease health related preparedness and response coordination
• Contribute to risk assessment, support to preparedness, and response to countries at risk of Ebola virus disease transmission
• Public Health emergencies Risk analysis
• Contribute to periodic reviews of technical and operational information on public health emergencies in the ESA Region
• Liaise with the regional and country health emergency focal points and partners to develop informative analytics on health emergency risks and events for monthly updates and periodic reports.
• Participate in relevant partners’ technical working groups, internal coordination meetings, ad-hoc and other relevant emergency coordination forums, joint assessment, and response missions where required.
• Maintaining the Health emergencies SharePoint

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Advanced university degree in public health or applied epidemiology. A first-level university degree with a relevant combination of academic qualifications and 2 additional years of experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• At least eight years of experience in the management of public health emergencies and vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks including cross-sectoral and multi-agency preparedness planning and coordination of response at the national and/or international level.
• Ability to manage large data sets and to present information in multiple formats, including geospatial mapping tools (such as GIS) and visualization software like Power Bi, and others. Experience doing this with the UN, NGOs, or government in a developing country for outbreak response is a plus.
• Experience in technical writing including but not limited to official public health documents for UN agencies, contributions to government health policies and guidelines, and academic publications
• Familiarity with UNICEF processes and approaches is a highly desired asset
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergencies is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.