Technical Officer

The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) (The Programme) is to build the capacity of Member States to manage health emergency risks and when national capacities are overwhelmed, to lead and coordinate the international health response to contain outbreaks and to provide effective relief and recovery to affected populations. The Health Emergency Information & Risk Assessment area (HIM) of the Health Emergencies Programme is responsible for providing timely and authoritative situation analysis, risk assessment, and response monitoring available for all major health threats, events, and emergencies.
This includes detecting, verifying, and assessing the risk of potential and ongoing health emergencies; establishing data collection mechanisms and monitoring ongoing health emergency operations; and providing data management, analytics, and reporting platforms to produce and disseminate timely emergency health information products.
Duties:

• Develop of pre-crisis critical historical baseline information on surveillance, health risks, capacities, needs, service coverage, and gaps to create a complete country profile.
• Support frameworks and standard tools for the monitoring including tools for data collection, analyses, and dissemination during and before the response of events.
• Support the development of scenario-based Key Performance Indicators for public hazards with defined thresholds to guide response to disease outbreak which can customized based on the hazard.
• Develop an information management tool kit to guide the IMST response including standard operation procedures, templates, checklists, business continuity plan, and other products and tools needed during and before the response.
• Ensure the IM Incident Management (IM) toolkit is based on the phases of crises (i.e., pre-crises, onset, acute, and protracted crises) with three board information management categories (i.e., data collection, analyses, and dissemination).
• Foster engagement with WHO and Member States regarding toolkit tools to ensure their use for action to contribute better, faster decisions during epidemics and pandemics.
• Support the development of standard operating procedures and online tutorial packages for all tools, Standard Operations Procedures (SOPs), and IM manuals throughout the entire emergency
• Develop of a standard contingency plan for business continuity and roster of key staff/skills needed during the IMST.
• Support creation WHO webpage, used as a one-stop repository of templates, SoPs, training, and plans of IM toolkit.
• Develop and conduct training courses and capacity-building exercises for data collection and analysis and the communication of outbreak response.
• Conduct a comparative analysis of lessons learned from country experiences during and after the events and share good practices on issues of region-wide concern.
• Oversee the implementation of independent evaluations, and or support from external firms conducting event response evaluation
• Collaborate with other surveillance officer and monitoring and evaluation teams to deliver on their common missions.
• Participate in regular calls (at least quarterly) and one in-person meeting with the Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems Division (WSE) in Berlin Hub and coordinate WSE division work in the Region.
• Collaborate with the other regional teams and regularly share updates and progress of the work they are delivering.
• Help teams in the other regions to adopt or implement the technical solutions developed.
• Contribute to the annual reporting requirements of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence

Required Qualifications:
Education
Essential:

• Advanced university degree (Master’s degree) in a health-related field, social science, statistics or epidemiology complemented by training in health information management from an accredited/recognized institute.

Experience
Essential:

• At least seven years’ experience, with international exposure, in Health Information Management Systems in emergencies and outbreaks and in countries with emergencies.
• Experience in developing and promoting collaborative partnerships and/or experience in developing countries.

Skills:

• Advanced ability to design, manage, analyze, and coordinate complex information system projects, computer-based applications and databases, and web-based tools
• Excellent skills in the assessment, monitoring, analysis, and evaluation of emergency health situations.
• High level of analytical skills.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills, with emphasis on writing skills.
• Sound analytical and organizational skills.
• Demonstrated ability to interact in complex situations involving technical, cultural and political elements.
• Proven ability to work and produce results under pressure in critical situations.
• Tact, diplomacy and courtesy.
• Knowledge of the preparedness, risk reduction and response approaches.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work under pressure.
• Knowledge of programme management and functioning of WHO and the UN system

Language Skills:
Essential:

• Excellent knowledge of English.

Source:  https://careers.who.int/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=2400744