Job Brief

Deputy Project Director, ImpactHDSS Ethiopia

Vital Strategies, headquartered in New York City, is an international public health organization. Our programs strengthen public health systems and address the world’s leading causes of illness, injury, and death. We work in more than 80 countries, supporting data-driven decision-making in government, advancing evidence-based public health policies, and mounting strategic communication campaigns. Vital Strategies’ priorities are driven by the greatest potential to improve and save lives. They include non-communicable disease prevention, tobacco control, road safety, food policy, environmental health, civil registration and vital statistics, and overdose prevention. Our programs are concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and cities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific. Please visit our website at www.vitalstrategies.org to find out more about our work.

About ImpactHDSS Ethiopia:

Vital Strategies, in partnership with the Ministry of Health (MOH) of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute’s National Data Management Center (EPHI/NDMC), Health and Demographic Surveillance System Sites (HDSSs) and other key stakeholders and collaborators have recently launched ImpactHDSS Ethiopia through a three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The purpose of this project is to leverage the health and vital events data produced by Ethiopia’s current set of 13 HDSS systems for public health use. These sites provide continuous, routine, and timely follow-up of pregnancies, live births, deaths, and causes of death. They also produce routinely updated direct measures of surveillance area resident populations, which provide the denominators for the calculation of rates.

While the long-term goal remains one of strengthening Ethiopia’s national Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system to provide these data, the government of Ethiopia has elected to supplement registration data in the meantime. One approach, to be taken under this grant, is to leverage government and other partner investments in the 13, university-sponsored HDSS sites and to explore how these can supplement and be supplemented by other mortality measurement or registration activities in the country to produce a representative picture of the population health and disease burdens causing premature death.

Specifically, ImpactHDSS Ethiopia will provide technical assistance and mentorship support to strengthen the standardization, quality, timeliness, and completeness of data collected; to undertake pooled analyses and produce the indicators, statistics, or data required to meet documented use cases in health policy and planning. Additional emphasis will be placed on linking the HDSS systems to the civil registration system and integrating HDSS data with those from other health information system platforms (e.g., DHIS2).

Ultimately, improved data, including mortality and cause of death estimates, fertility estimates, as well as health service utilization information, will be provided to government decision-makers in a timely manner, synchronized with decision-making processes. Vital Strategies experts will be embedded within Government of Ethiopia institutions, as well as in a small project management and support team in the Vital Strategies Ethiopia office.

Job Purpose:

The position of Deputy Project Director/HDSS Coordinator seconded to the EPHI/NDMC, located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is a new position. The Ethiopian Public Health Institute works to improve the health of the general public of Ethiopia through undertaking research on priority health and nutrition issues for evidence-based information utilization and technology transfer; effective public health emergency management; establishing quality laboratory system; and training public health researchers and practitioners for best public health interventions.

Under the Project Director, ImpactHDSS Ethiopia and the Director of the NDMC, the Deputy Director will support the Technical Working Group (TWG), Technical Task Forces, and the network of HDSS sites on technical aspects relating to funded activities. Duties will include supporting a rejuvenated network of HDSS sites; contributing to or leading the development, validation, publication, and supporting the adoption of TWG-endorsed standards and producing a National Standards Document; providing capacity-strengthening activities for the generation and production of standardized data, and finally, strengthening gender responsive analytic capacity and data use for policy-making and planning.

The Project Director and the Deputy Project Director will be responsible for ensuring implementation is aligned with Steering Committee decisions and directives and, as a corollary, best practices in HDSS implementation and use of evidence to inform population and health care policy and practice.

This is a full-time seconded position that will be based at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute’s National Data Management Center for Health (NDMC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Deputy Project Director will allocate a defined portion of their time to NDMC activities, aligning with the center's priorities in HDSS health data integration and analytic capacity-building

We offer highly competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits. The annual salary range for this position is $51,250 USD to $56,150 USD. Interested candidates should note that the salary for this position is temporarily pegged to the USD due to the depreciation of the Ethiopian Birr. This arrangement will be reviewed at the end of March 2025.

Duties and Responsibilities:

The Deputy Project Director will be seconded into the EPHI/NDMC, located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Under the Project Director, the Deputy Project Director will work with the EPHI/NDMC team, and counterparts from the 13 HDSS sites, to perform duties as described.

Program Management - 

· Work with the Project Director in leading the program including assistance with financial management, and some budget/resource allocation decisions;

· Maintain full situational awareness of the implementation progress of the program, supported by the Senior Program and M&E Manager, and identify issues to the Director as encountered;

· Collaborate on implementation planning and design, including the development or revision of project workplans and result frameworks for review by the donor and partners;

· Manage the project budget, monitor for variations, discuss projections with senior managers and the grants team, and report to the Director any areas of concern.

Technical Assistance - 

· Lead the development, validation, publication and support the adoption of national standards and best practices on HDSS methods and protocols;

· Understand the capacity needs of HDSS sites;

· Adapt and oversee the effective implementation of technical assistance to support the adoption and implementation of national standards;

· Help determine use cases that reflect the need and opportunities for HDSS data to inform local and national programmatic decision-making and apply technical assistance to ensure that HDSS sites generate data that realize this potential;

· Facilitate HDSS sites and EPHI/NDMC to prepare analytical reports that provide data, visualizations, and statistical analyses needed to inform policy development for identified priority use cases;

· Build analytic capacity among HDSS staff and ensure the timely and routine production of products that are responsive to the underlying objectives of use cases;

· Identify opportunities with HDSS sites, EPHI, and MOH leadership for publication of project-related work and approaches and discuss with the Director.

Cross-cutting - 

· In conjunction with the Project Director, oversee communication activities surrounding program developments and reporting;

· Represent the project to internal and external stakeholders when required;

· Oversee additional specific projects, as required;

· Participate in other Vital Strategies activities as needed.

Qualifications:

Education and Degree - 

· Master’s degree in population health, demography, epidemiology, data science, statistics, biostatistics or related subject with demonstrated skills in demographic or epidemiologic analysis. PhD preferred.

Skills and Abilities - 

· Strong track record of program design and program management skills;

· Strong supervisory skills including employee management;

· Strong facilitation, organizational, interpersonal, and communication skills including high proficiency in speaking and writing in English;

· Diplomacy and solutions orientation skills to ensure smooth relations with a wide range of stakeholders;

· Engage multiple partners across different sites;

· Ability to build strong, ongoing, impactful relationships at all levels with a highly diverse group of colleagues;

· Demonstrated commitment to valuing diversity and contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment.

Experience:

Required - 

· 10+ years in global public health programs and management;

· Experience managing some aspect of HDSS operations, ideally including processing surveillance and generating high-quality longitudinal data sets;

· Experience in managing program (grant-funded) budgets;

· Experience in general program management and meeting deliverables in a timely manner;

· Experience in developing and leading workshops to facilitate others in the production of analytic outputs or to undertake analytic capacity-strengthening activities.

Preferred - 

· Experience with health systems or health information systems strengthening;

· Experience in civil registration and vital statistics strengthening in low- and middle-income countries.

Working Conditions and Physical Requirements:

· Travel will be required in Ethiopia to attend in-person meetings;

· This Vacancy Advertisement is open to Ethiopian Nationals and candidates holding a valid work resident permit for Ethiopia;

· Vital Strategies strongly encourages qualified female candidates to apply.

How to Apply:

Vital Strategies has engaged Ethiojobs, part of the Africa Job Network portfolio with a trusted legacy in meeting a diverse range of human capital needs, to lead this search. If you are interested in applying or learning more about the position, please follow this link:

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