Catholic Relief Services- Zambia Country Program New Job Vacancy

About CRS

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. Our Catholic identity is at the heart of our mission and operations. We welcome as part of our staff and as partners people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and commitment to serving those in need.

The CRS Zambia program office opened in September 1999, following an extensive and participatory assessment in collaboration with the Zambian Catholic Commission for Development (CCD). Programming has transitioned from its early stages augmenting CRS private resources with outside public funding. Opportunities abound in Zambia for quality programming that meets the needs of the poorest in a country where the vast majority (80%) lives below the poverty line and approximately 14% are HIV positive. The overall programming focus of CRS Zambia is HIV and Food Security.

Background

Through the Faith-Based Action for Scaling up Testing and Treatment for the Epidemic Response (FASTER) project, CRS plans to catalyze a game-changing enabling environment and create operational guidance, tools, training, and practical evidence that will allow provinces, districts and sites with high unmet need to address key gaps in the child and adolescent HIV treatment cascade. FASTER is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to accelerate pediatric ART in four African countries. To accelerate efforts to end pediatric HIV in Zambia, CRS will address structural and policy barriers, innovate, and facilitate scale-up of what works. FASTER will work with the Ministry of Health (MOH), national technical working groups, and other pediatric implementers nationwide.

Position: Project Manager – FASTER Project

Position Summary

The FASTER Project Manager will be responsible for leading the community and clinical teams and providing Pediatric HIV Care and Treatment support, as well as community support to all supported health facilities. S/he will supervise and support Facility Pediatric Mentor clinicians in communications with health facilities, development of annual targets and ensuring the appropriate use of resources. The Project Manager will also assist in identifying areas of concern within the project and work with the program team to find viable solutions.  S/he will work with the M&E team to ensure continuous quality improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide direct support and oversight to the Facility Pediatric Mentor clinicians, mentoring them to enhance their abilities to deliver comprehensive a pediatric HIV treatment and care program using an efficient and sustainable community approach
• Provide leadership and technical expertise for the development, updating, and implementation of policies, guidelines and job aids for the project in line with national guidelines and CDC expectations
• Coordinate with MOH at national and provincial levels to ensure that the project is implemented in line with the National Health Strategic Plan and the national pediatric HIV treatment guidelines.
• Mentor and supervise facility pediatric mentors to ensure improved access to ART for PMTCT and increased uptake of pediatric ART in line with the national HIV guidelines and national targets.
• Work with MoH technical working groups to periodically review training curricula for health workers in ART/PMTCT service delivery as well as treatment of HIV-related conditions and infections
• Working in conjunction with the Project Director and Facility Pediatric Mentors, mobilize the community and clinical/technical expertise at the health facilities to resolve community and clinical issues that shape or affect local public policy as well as project design
• Lead pediatric HIV treatment and community technical working groups and sub-groups to ensure enhanced coordination, harmonization and strengthening of Differentiated Service Delivery Models (DSD), as well as pediatric HIV prevention treatment and care policies, guidelines and standard operating procedures, and standardized training of health care workers.
• Ensure the project fully implements management systems and standards for technical support services such as laboratory support (including the institution of routine viral load scale up, mechanisms for early infant diagnosis and systems for shorter results turn around), referral, linkage and retention systems, project monitoring and evaluation for better patient outcomes
• Contribute to organizational learning  within CRS Zambia, Southern African regional country programs and CRS headquarters
• Take leadership in ensuring that community and clinical activities are implemented in conformity to inter-sectoral, regional, international and other policies and guidelines for pediatric HIV treatment and care issues
• Provide leadership in community and health systems assessments and help in identifying systems’ needs to run pediatric HIV treatment interventions by faith-based health facilities in Zambia using the community approach
• Work with faith-based health facilities and the MOH at the provincial and district level to set up a training calendar to help monitor in-service training and mentoring activities for the community and clinical pediatric HIV treatment services
• Work with community and technical teams to identify innovative, cost-effective, replicable interventions for decongesting health facilities and transferring stable on care patients to community care and treatment
• Support community and technical teams to carry out on-the-job training and mentoring for new faith-based facility staff in pediatric HIV treatment, care, and support
• Support community and technical teams in developing work plans, scheduling of implementation timelines, interpretation of program data for quality assurance and quality improvement, as well as reporting on patient outcomes upon implementation
• Support project teams in documentation in areas such as the community approach, pediatric HIV prevention, treatment, and care and share good practices within and without CRS, in local and international conferences in line with CDC requirements
• Support relevant junior staff in developing and conducting small tests of change for innovations in program implementation
• Support finalization of active follow up of pre-ART patients for immediate ART initiation (e.g., through phone calls, SMS, and/or active tracing using community health workers) including support for distribution and utilization of SOPs for treatment, clinical and laboratory monitoring; patient flow and appointment scheduling (esp. for multi-month scripting)
• Improve linkage to treatment (evidence-based linkage)
• Support the scale-up of differentiated models of service delivery to decongest clinics, increase ART retention, and improve quality of care
• Support monitoring the retention of patients initiated on pediatric ART to identify and address losses to follow-up
• Author and co-author abstracts and presentations for national, international conferences as well as journals as applicable
• Any other duties as assigned by the supervisor

Qualifications

• M.D. preferred, or an advanced degree in a public health or medically-related field
• Experience with antiretroviral therapy (ART) and understanding of Zambian ART guidelines
• Experience in pediatric HIV and AIDS programming in resource-poor settings at the field level and providing technical assistance to partner organizations
• Proficiency in MS Office suite, including Word, Excel, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. SPSS and Epi-info, a plus
• Five years’ relevant post-qualification experience, familiarity with USG procedures.
• Good command of spoken and written English

Personal Skills

• Self-guided, strong organizational and planning skills
• Ability to work independently and under pressure
• Excellent communication, coaching and facilitation skills
• Analytical skills
• Ability to make sound judgment
• Creative problem-solving skills
• Ethical conduct in accordance with recognized professional and organizational codes of ethics
• Proactive, resourceful and results-oriented
• Communication (oral and written) skills
• Relationship management skills

Travel Required: 50%

Key Working Relationships

Supervisory: None

Internal:  Country Representative, FASTER Project Director, Technical leads for FASTER and Epic 3-90, Project Managers, MEAL

External: Donor, consortium members (EGPAF and CHAI), host country government agencies, donor agencies, CDC implementing partners, international and national non-governmental organizations.

Agency-wide Competencies: These are rooted in the mission, values, and principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and to achieve the desired results.

• Trusting Relationships
• Professional Growth
• Partnership
• Accountability

CRS’ talent acquisition procedures reflect our commitment to protecting children and vulnerable adults from abuse and exploitation.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Applicants Instructions: Please email a cover letter, and curriculum vitae which should include three references to: [email protected]. Please include the position you are applying for in the subject line.

The closing date for applications is 31 May 2019. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview.