Current Recruitment at Population Council


The Population Council is an international, nonprofit, nongovernmental research organization that confronts critical health and development issues, from stopping the spread of HIV to improving reproductive health, and ensuring that young people lead full and productive lives. Through biomedical, social science, and public health research in 50 countries, we work with our partners to deliver solutions that lead to more effective policies, programs, and technologies that improve lives around the world.

In Zambia, the Population Council initiates, as well as collaborates on, research that contributes to achievement of global and national outcome goals in sexual and reproductive health (SRH); HIV/AIDS; and poverty, gender, and youth. The work entails helping the country to achieve its family planning and reproductive health targets, including the Family Planning 2020 goals, helping mitigate the effect and curtail the spread of HIV, and addressing the social dimensions of poverty and underlying causes, as well as help address the effects of gender inequality. The Population Council has a particular interest in youth, especially the discrepancies in opportunity that arise during adolescence, and the critical requirements for attaining a successful and productive adulthood.

Organization: Population Council
Job Title: Health Informatics Officer
Location: Lusaka, Zambia
Eligible Citizenship: USA
Application Code: Z09-Int
Job Function: Database Management / Data Analysis / Statistics, Information Technology / ICT / Informatics
Issue Area: HIV / AIDS, Maternal and Reproductive Health, Women and Girls, Youth

Position Overview

The Health Informatics Officer will be based in Lusaka and will provide implementation support to Population Council on a range of information management and data analysis activities. Population Council conducts implementation of science research and reproductive health, HIV, and adolescent empowerment initiatives in Zambia and the region. The Health Informatics Officer will support capture, transmission, aggregation, and analysis of routine and observational data, working with common tools like ODK, FormHub, Microsoft Access, Epi Info, and other platforms.

The fellow will be responsible for building in-country capacity, creating, modifying, and maintaining potentially complex and diverse datasets, and playing a key role in the design of differentiated information flows for external partners. It is not necessarily expected that the Health Informatics Officer have all the technical skills required to fully support all Population Council-led implementations; while the Health Informatics Officer will be responsible for all the above outcomes, it is anticipated that the fellow will coordinate with expert developers to produce these outcomes as necessary.

Responsibilities

  • Assist project managers and developers with identifying user requirements
  • Develop coherent and technology-appropriate specifications for meeting user requirements
  • Work with project management and directors to explain solutions to clients
  • Set up, configure, and maintain project-specific instances as required

Desired Skills and Experience

Items indicated with an asterisk (*) are required

  • Bachelor’s degree*
    • Preferred: Master’s degree in relevant field
  • Prior experience in health information management systems such as District Health Information Systems 2 (www.dhis2.org), ODK, or similar*
  • Experience managing databases*
  • Knowledge of global health issues*
  • A practical understanding of the R programming language and Stata
  • Ability to conduct various stages of statistical analyses including everything from data collection, aggregation, and cleaning to visualization (experience with Shiny is preferred) and exploratory analysis to statistical model building and evaluation
  • Experience with best practices for programming include: source control, collaborative coding (using Git or an equivalent), and literate and reproducible programming
  • Ability to learn on the job is highly valued

Fellowship Logistics

During the fellowship year, all fellows are provided with:

  • A living stipend of $700/month
  • Housing and utilities
  • Health insurance
  • A professional development grant of $600
  • An award of $1500 upon successful completion of the fellowship year
  • Travel costs covered to and from placement site, training and retreats

*Note: The living stipend and the completion award may be paid out in USD or local currency, as determined by the placement organization.

Living and Working in Zambia: Fellows are provided with basic housing and a utilities stipend during the fellowship year. GHC coordinates housing for fellows in shared apartments or houses that meet GHC’s safety standards. Fellows at Population Council will be housed in Lusaka, an urban city and capital of Zambia.

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