Call For Application – Senior Community Advisor: Catholic Relief Services- Zambia Country Program

The CRS Zambia country program was established in 2000, and administers a varied and diversified portfolio of nutrition, health systems strengthening, food security, economic growth and livelihoods, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) research and HIV and AIDS programs. Catholic Relief Services carries out a commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas.

BACKGROUND: 

The Senior Community Advisor under the supervision of the Senior Care and Treatment Technical Advisor (Clinical Team Lead), will provide technical leadership for all community HIV treatment activities of EPIC 3-90 to strengthen faith based health facilities. The project is designed with a focus to scaling up of Community Based HIV treatment across project’s area of intervention. The Senior Community Advisor will oversee community level interventions including counseling and testing, transfer of stable on care patient to the community under the care of community health workers, support to referral and linkages, work closely with M&E team to effectively collect community data, as well as documenting all community strategies successes.  The Senior Community Advisor (SCA) will oversee community level technical teams providing technical assistance to community health workers, health facility community treatment teams ensuring non-interrupted service provision to clients receiving treatment. She/he will work with the MoH teams to ensure that continued provision of quality care and treatment program in line with National Treatment guidelines. The SCA will closely coordinate with district teams to ensure that community strategy and approaches are effectively implemented to achieve desired results. She/he will contribute to project reporting, project planning, capacity strengthening for community level technical teams as well as project monitoring and evaluation.

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Provide technical backstopping, oversight and direction ensuring that community teams remain focused to implementing HIV treatment approaches in line with project goals, objectives and targets
• Technically contribute to work plans, development of community based treatment activities as outlined in the project in line with health facility teams.
• Participate in donor, stakeholder and MoH technical forums and contribute to national dialogue towards the implementation of the 90-90-90 goal.
• Continuously identify appropriate community-based strategies at facility and district health management level to address HIV treatment service delivery systems bottlenecks that act as an impediment to effective service delivery
• Review and refine evidence-based training materials, job aids, and curricula, supervisory systems and other training materials needed for implementation of accelerated HIV treatment scale up using the community approach
• Support and work closely with clinical/technical team in the implementation of differentiated models, to improve HIV services outcomes.
• Identify training needs and contribute to designing and implementation of measures to address the needs together with health facility and community level teams
• Together with other clinical technical teams, provide mentoring and capacity building to clinical teams and district health management teams in the community approach
• Ensure timely implementation of all community level project inputs, including planning and implementing assessments, site system strengthening, follow-up and supervision, coordination of community health worker groups, advocacy, demand creation, policy support, capacity-building and M&E across project sites, in close coordination and collaboration with CDC and Ministry of Health
• Support the Chief of Party and the Deputy Chief of party/Technical in formulation of approaches for scale up of community level HIV treatment
• Actively participate in all Technical Advisory Group Meetings and multi stakeholder forum for community based treatment approach and represent the project in professional forums by participating and presenting in key meetings, conferences and technical working groups.
• Provide guidance to project teams, professional associations and stakeholders in the revision/development of evidenced-based standards for competency in community HIV treatment and care.
• Building the capacity of district level staff to ensure provision of high quality HIV treatment services to supported sites that ensure PLHIV (pediatrics, Adult, adolescents) are tested and initiated on treatment.
• Collaborate with the Ministry of Health, community level actors, local stakeholders and other funded implementing partners, to ensure that all interventions are in conformity with national policy & treatment guidelines.
• Regularly report to the Deputy Chief of Party/Technical and technical staff on successes, challenges and lessons learned in implementation related to community treatment, health systems and other areas of technical expertise
• Author and co-author abstracts and presentations for national, international conferences as well as journals as applicable.
• Contribute to project reports – Monthly, Quarterly and Annual program reports.
• Work with Strategic Information teams to develop M&E frameworks and effectively track community implementation data/results
• Any other duties as assigned by the supervisor.

KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS:

Internal: Chief of Party, Deputy Chief of Party (Operations), Health System Strengthening Advisor, Clinical Team, SI/M&E Team, Consortium Members (CHAZ and Chreso) and Health Facilities,

External: Host country government agencies, international and national non-governmental organizations.

JOB SPECIFICATIONS:

• Advanced degree in public health, Nursing, Nurse Prescriber, Clinical Medicine, Community Health; additional training in HIV Medicine preferred.
• 5 years’ experience implementing HIV prevention, care and treatment, preferably supporting faith based health facilities in Zambia
• Experience working closely with national HIV/AIDS control programs and regional/district health authorities
• Experience training health workers on aspects related to HIV community based treatment approaches
• A good understanding of the Zambian socio-political context and developments in the health sector
• Ability to work in a complex environment with multiple tasks, short deadlines and intense pressure to perform
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office
• Fluent in written and spoken English
• Ability to travel nationally and internationally

APPLICANT INSTRUCTIONS:

Please email a cover letter, Curriculum Vitae which must include three references to: [email protected].

Please include the positions you are applying for in the subject line.

The closing date for receiving applicants is 20th March 2017. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview.