Job Vacancy @ The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) – Senior Associate, Oxygen Access
The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit: 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.
The team in Sierra Leone was engaged in 2015 by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) to support the health sector’s recovery after the devastating Ebola crisis. CHAI began support to the MoHS with focus in two areas: strengthening the supply chain for drugs and medical supplies and improving human resources for health. The team closely collaborated with the Government of Sierra Leone to strengthen national health systems and played a vital role in post-Ebola recovery efforts. In recent years CHAI has expanded its support to the Government to include programs on sexual and reproductive health, vaccines delivery, assistive technology, geospatial data use (GRID3), and medical oxygen.
The Senior Associate, Oxygen Access will support the government in increasing access to oxygen therapy in Sierra Leone. The Senior Associate will lead a liquid oxygen pilot project that involve trucking liquid oxygen (LOX) in 30L LOX cylinders – micro-VIE tanks from regional suppliers in neighboring countries, to selected facilities in Sierra Leone, and the implementation of a tracking system to communicate needs and cylinder logistics/location in real time. This position is a unique opportunity to gain experience in health systems strengthening and work across all critical systems building blocks. The Senior Associate will provide technical support across multiple workstreams – background research and analysis, procurement, supply chain, and inventory management; clinical training and mentoring, and oversee day-to-day operations of program activities.
This position will be based in Freetown and has an end date of December 31, 2022.
Responsibilities
The Senior Associate will report directly to the Country Manager and will provide technical assistance in overall LOX pilot project including:
- Establishment of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with at least 2 willing regional LOX suppliers
- Supporting the establishment of systems that guarantee safe LOX importation and distribution routes
- Setting up a well-functional LOX cylinder filling, retrieval and tracking system
- Leading and facilitating discussions for scaling up the pilot including establishing a depot, increasing LOX importation volumes, and increasing the network of distribution points
- Setting up of a national plan to officially incorporate LOX into product mix
Specifically, the Senior Associate will perform the following tasks:
Coordination
- Provide ongoing support to strengthen the MoHS Oxygen TWG as a coordination platform and build the capacity of relevant MoHS staff to lead the platform; act as secretariat to the TWG, which may include drafting presentations, meeting agendas, taking meeting minutes and information dissemination to participants and other stakeholders.
- Regularly liaise with MoHS units, other government agencies, NGOs, and international multilateral organizations for oxygen-related work, and serve as focal person at relevant workshops and meetings
- Support broader advocacy and resource mobilization efforts for oxygen access in general and LOX (e.g., drafting grant proposals, concept notes, presentations, budgets)
- Systematically track implementation, outputs, measure effectiveness of the project to document and submit bi-monthly and end of project success stories
Training and Mentoring
- Support clinical training and mentoring in oxygen: training planning and implementation, tracking capacity gaps and progress, ensure integration with other CHAI Sierra Leone programs, etc.
- Develop guiding and training tools to support capacity strengthening for both BMEs responsible for running and maintaining LOX systems, and health care workers (HCWs) working in critical care services at the pilot facilities
- Work with the MoHS and key stakeholders to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) for LOX systems to better guide HCW and operations teams within the pilot health facilities
Supply Chain
- Support the MoHS in setting up infrastructure for LOX including facilitating supplier negotiations for LOX, network design for supply chain and return logistics for cylinders and equipment procurement,
- Support national quantification review exercises for oxygen equipment and supplies
- Support development of technical specifications for oxygen technologies, and ensure integration into revision of national donation guidelines
- Identify opportunities to introduce inventory management systems and tools for oxygen technologies; develop standard operation procedures (SOPs) as needed
- Support integration of reporting and distribution of oxygen technologies into existing routine supply chain systems (e.g., e/LMIS), and support development and updating of oxygen production tracking tools.
- Support pilot facilities to monitor usage and control wastage of medical oxygen
- Support pilot facilities to establish a mechanism for scaling up and sustaining LOX use and management
- Other responsibilities as needed
Qualifications
The position requires an individual with a self-starter attitude with the ability to apply systems thinking to their everyday work. The individual must be able to function independently and flexibly in a swift manner. The ideal individual will possess cultural sensitivity skills and demonstrate high emotional intelligence, as they will be working closely with government and external partners.
The ideal candidate should have the following minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in public health, biomedical sciences or engineering, supply chain, or related discipline and at least 2 years of professional experience in health systems strengthening; Master’s degree in the related field preferred
- Experience in conducting desk and literature reviews; ability to streamline and synthesize large amounts of information into high-quality documents for a wide range of stakeholder
- Experience in convening meetings and facilitating discussions among multidisciplinary group of stakeholders; previous experience working with government stakeholders preferred
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills; high proficiency in MS Office Suite, particularly Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook
- Strong critical thinking skills and ability to problem-solve independently
- Great attention to detail, with exceptional organizational, coordination, and time management skills
- Able to quickly learn and become well-versed in all relevant aspects of oxygen delivery, across components of supply chain, equipment management, human resources, and clinical training, etc.
- Understanding of and sensitivity to limitations in low-resource settings
Preferred:
- Prior experience in West Africa or other low-resource settings
- Understanding or prior experience in global procurement and medical device quality standards helpful
- Fluency in Krio
