Technical Advisor, Epidemiologist - Asia

Overview

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 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 skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org.

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Program Overview

CHAI’s global malaria and neglected tropical disease (NTD) program provides direct technical and operational support to countries around the globe to strengthen their programs and reduce the burden of preventable, treatable diseases. We support governments to scale up effective interventions for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance, with the goals of sustainably reducing the number of illnesses and deaths worldwide in the short-term and accelerating progress towards elimination of malaria and NTDs in the long term.

CHAI has been working on malaria programs in Asia since 2008 with a focus on elimination in the Greater Mekong Subregion. In 2024, CHAI commenced work on dengue, which includes supporting the deployment of mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia.

Position Overview

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated individual with strong public health experience and analytical skills to serve as an epidemiologist and technical advisor to its teams across Asia. This role offers a unique opportunity for a talented individual to apply epidemiological and analytical skills to guide the operations of a cross-country disease elimination program and an opportunity to help end two diseases in the Asia region. The successful candidate will be a key technical and strategic voice in the region, leading CHAI’s work on malaria and dengue analytics and surveillance.

The successful candidate will lead a small team of epidemiologists working directly with government counterparts to assess, design, and scale-up disease surveillance systems; conduct robust data analysis; and monitor and evaluate the success of ongoing efforts to achieve malaria elimination and dengue control. The individual will collaborate with a diverse team of CHAI staff based across multiple countries (primarily but not exclusively in Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, India, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea), government programs, academics, and public health agencies. The successful candidate will possess strong communication, organizational, and management skills; work independently to drive implementation; have the potential to grow into a global health leader; and have deep personal commitment to producing results.

Responsibilities

Regional Strategy:

• Serve as a technical and strategic leader for the region on malaria, dengue and expanding portfolios where required
• Lead all malaria and dengue surveillance and analytics work for the GMS and other geographies, as required
• Serve as an expert/technical advisor for epidemiological questions to CHAI’s regional team, country teams, and for senior leadership
• Support rigorous evidence-based planning of intervention deployment, and design and implement monitoring to evaluate effectiveness of current government interventions, and identify potential approaches or strategies to accelerate progress
• With the CHAI Regional Manager, country Program Managers and MoH counterparts, discuss and design CHAI and MoH strategy for malaria elimination and dengue control;

Technical project management:

• Oversee the implementation of analytics, surveillance, and technology projects to support evidence-based decisions
• Contribute to the formulation of annual work plans across multiple countries
• Organize, clean, and integrate datasets; conduct statistical analyses; and develop and interpret malaria risk maps and stratifications
• Lead monitoring and evaluation of the performance of existing and new surveillance processes and platforms, and identify ways of improving them
• Review and ensure high-quality surveillance and analytics guidelines and SOPs, M&E plans, lessons learned documents, and operational manuals
• Oversee design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination of operational research projects related to surveillance, intervention effectiveness, and entomology
• Support the development of country-led systems for conducting data analysis and leading surveillance related processes;

Team management and partner collaboration:

• Directly manage, onboard, provide technical mentorship, supervision, guidance, and training to a small team of junior and mid-level epidemiologists based across the region
• Work directly with country teams and governmental staff to better integrate epidemiological, entomological, and programmatic data use and analysis into routine programmatic activities at all levels of the health system
• Cultivate and establish relationships with local academic institutions, NGOs (e.g. PSI, PATH), and regional organizations (e.g. WHO, APMEN) working on data analysis or surveillance to inform elimination goals, which may include management of contracts with external partners
• Foster a collaborative and high-performing team culture across malaria, dengue, and cross-cutting workstreams, helping build strong connections between technical, country, and regional teams;

Communication and knowledge management

• Manage and develop resources and best practices to share lessons across teams; synthesize and disseminate findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications
• Represent CHAI at external technical meetings, acting as the face of the organization to academic/technical partners within the region, including via the dissemination of findings through high-quality presentations, reports, and publications
• Review and/or contribute to the development of the technical sections of grant deliverables and internal reporting (power points, programmatic reports, grant proposals, scoping documents);

Any other tasks identified.

Qualifications

• Masters or PhD in public health, epidemiology or related field
• 5+ years of work experience with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership, including management experience
• Enthusiasm for applying research methods to solve global health problems, focusing on malaria and/or other major global infectious disease concerns
• Experience mentoring and managing junior technical staff
• Experience with designing, conducting, and analysing epidemiological surveys
• Experience in evaluating, working with, and strengthening disease surveillance systems
• Experience in working and communicating with government officials and other external partners
• Experience with strategic development for public health
• Exceptional skills in the epidemiological analysis of health data and the application of analyses for decision-making
• Statistical and geospatial analysis programming experience (including expertise with R, STATA, ArcGIS, QGIS and/or other relevant software)
• High levels of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications
• Proficiency in report writing and other concise written communications
• Ability to work independently in remote and unstructured settings and to adapt to new environments and challenges
• Ability to collaborate and operate as part of a multicultural team
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills
• Willingness to travel extensively (30% of time)
• Fluency in English

Advantages:

• Knowledge of malaria, dengue, and/or other major global infectious disease problems
• Experience in programming (e.g., JavaScript, Python) and/or working with surveillance platforms (e.g. DHIS2), data collection tools (e.g. ODK, SurveyCTO) and/or data visualization applications (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI)
• Experience working in fast-paced, output-oriented environments
• Experience living or working in resource-limited settings, especially in the Greater Mekong Subregion
• Burmese, Khmer, Laos, Thai, and/or Vietnamese language proficiency.

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