Founded in 2002 by President William J. Clinton, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to strengthening integrated health systems around the world and expanding access to care and treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria and other illnesses. Based on the premise that business oriented strategy can facilitate solutions to global health challenges, CHAI acts as a catalyst to mobilize new resources and optimize the impact of these resources to save lives, via improved organization of commodity markets and more effective local management. By working in association with governments and other NGO partners, CHAI is focused on large scale impact and, to date, CHAI has secured lower pricing agreements for treatment options in more than 70 countries. In addition, CHAI's teams are working side-by-side with over 30 governments to tackle many of the largest barriers to effective treatment and care.
CHAI started supporting Cameroon's Ministry of Public Health in 2007 to scale up pediatric and adult second-line anti-retroviral therapy, through donation of lifesaving ARVs and diagnostics; as well as technical assistance for improving the quality of ART and laboratory systems to support HIV care and treatment. In recent years, CHAI has expanded its support to the Ministry of Public Health to other areas including malaria diagnosis and helping to introduce more effective new treatment for severe malaria, improving access to family planning, point of care diagnostics and mobile health technology (mhealth), and technical support for the Ministry of Health's drive to sustainably fund healthcare. In early 2015, CHAI launched its vaccines program to apply the techniques it has used to successfully improve access to HIV/AIDS and malaria treatment in Cameroon to vaccines, one of the most cost-effective public health interventions. After focusing primarily on supporting new vaccine introduction and improving vaccine delivery supply chains, CHAI, in collaboration with Gavi now aim to address some of these barriers affecting RI in Cameroon
CHAI Vaccines is looking for a Senior Associate to develop and implement this program in Cameroon, with the vision of this program will be to assist the Government of Cameroon to reach its goal of routine immunization coverage for all children.
The successful candidate will have four primary areas of responsibility, which correspond to the four key objectives of the program;
Improve Routine Immunization, with a focus on improving coverage in big cities;
- Identify the main drivers of low coverage in 13 target districts in the cities of Yaoundé and Douala and develop targeted interventions to address priority barriers to achieving target coverage;
- Develop an urban immunization map, which clearly identifies and quantifies populations in high-risk urban areas, as well as all health facilities in the district and outreach sites.
- Support target districts in these cities to develop evidence-based and costed district work plans;
- Support PEV to leverage key immunization events (e.g. African Nutrition Week and African Vaccination Week) to deliver immunization services to hard-to-reach urban populations in Yaoundé and Douala
- Support PEV and partners to coordinate and conduct regular monitoring of progress through reviews of monitoring charts, quarterly reviews and targeted supportive supervisions, relentlessly tracking the number of children left unimmunized.
Improve supportive supervision at national and subnational level;
- Support PEV in planning and tracking quality supportive supervisions at the national and regional level and in target districts
- Support PEV to develop a supportive supervision system. This will include establishing a cadre of well trained central, regional and district supervisors, developing robust tools (e.g. training materials, job aids, check lists, recording forms, SOPs, etc.) and methodologies for supportive supervision, and developing strategies for mobilizing the necessary resources for supportive supervisions (e.g. identifying areas for collaboration with other partners and program)
- Set up a knowledge management system, which will facilitate onboarding of new staff
- And support PEV to institute an internal mentoring system with well-established succession plans and well-structured workforce planning amongst others.
- Work with PEV to use routine PEV data and data from the baseline assessment to plan priority supervision visits, developing high quality work plans and SOPs for supervising the poorest performing regions and districts identified in the baseline assessment.
- Guide the core supervisors to implement priority supervision visits to identified target sites
- Support PEV to determine how to best address key issues emerging from the supervision visits, and document and share best practices on supportive supervisions.
Provide technical assistance on EPI indicator generation and implementation as it relates to PBF
- Provide technical assistance to EPI in the selection and costing of relevant PBF indicators for RI;
- Work with partners to set up PBF taskforces in Douala and Yaounde, with clear terms of references;
- Support EPI to develop tools and methodologies for PBF implementation
- Provide appropriate follow-up to ensure the recommendations are well implemented and that indicators are piloted smoothly in Yaounde and Douala
- Set up a monitoring and evaluation framework, and define payment modalities, amongst others.
Support the use of innovative technologies to reduce drop-out rate and ensure better surveillance
- Take the lead in developing a project management dashboard for each region and target district to track various immunization outcomes;
- Populate dashboard drawing information from from monthly reports from health facilities, ranking health facilities' performance based on of defined variables;
- Share dashboards with national and regional PEV staff on a quarterly basis and facilitate an action-oriented discussion;
- Use performance information to incentivize actions so as to enable PEV partners to focus their scare resources on low performing districts and facilities;
- Support the Program Manager to identify and define CHAI's overall strategy within the program area, develop clear operational plans for execution, and continually identify opportunities for CHAI to add value and maximize impact
- Collaborate with government to ensure skills transfer and government ownership, identify the most critical hurdles to scale-up, and develop innovative strategies to address them.
- Liaise closely with technical partners in government to monitor and evaluate interventions against objectives and targets, bringing in technical expertise when needed to ensure rapid implementation
- Develop strong working relationships with key stakeholders in government, international partners, donors and NGOs, and ensure maximum coordination of resources and effort for successful implementation and scale-up
- Support the Program Manager to develop and manage work plans, budgets, schedules and logistics plans for key activities
- Perform other tasks as necessary
- At least a higher degree in a quantitative or health related discipline strongly preferred; or Bachelor's degree minimum
- At least three years of work experience in a field requiring both advanced analytics and exceptional presentation skills. Candidates with experience from a reputable international consulting firm will have an advantage;
- Experience in healthcare, with preferably a background in vaccines or related field ;
- Strong quantitative and problem solving skills; including proficiency at advanced Microsoft Excel;
- Experience in the planning and execution of large scale projects; including budgeting and activity planning;
- The ability to build relationships and influence stakeholders;
- Experience in structuring and leading evidence based decision making processes;
- Proven track record working in challenging multi-stakeholder environments;
- A structured and assured oral and written communication style;
- First-hand experience of strategy development, with previous exposure to strategy work at organization level;
- Personal qualities including resourcefulness, entrepreneurialism, flexibility, independence, humility and strong work ethic;
- Ability to travel extensively without any constraints (e.g. legal or personal) ;
- Fluent in English and French;
- Demonstrated strong analytical, leadership, and problem solving skills
- Ability to work independently and effectively in high-pressure, fast-paced environment and handle multiple tasks simultaneously
- Proven ability to build relationships with a range of stakeholders and drive immediate results
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
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