TOR of COVID-19 Senior Epidemiologist Assigned to NPHIL

Jhpiego is a non-for-profit Organization and a global leader in improving health care in developing countries to prevent the needless deaths of women and their families. Since 2008, Jhpiego has worked closely with the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Liberia to help improve the health of Liberians. Jhpiego Liberia currently implements three projects: USAID-funded STAIP, CDC-funded Enhancing Global Health Security (EGHS) and PEPFAR-HRSA-funded GR-II. The US-CDC funded EGHS project supports the MOH and NPHIL to improve prevention of preventable epidemics, including naturally occurring epidemics and those due to the intentional or accidental spread of dangerous pathogens, strengthen the ability to detect threats early, including detecting, characterizing, and reporting emerging public health threats and respond quickly and effectively to public health threats of international concern. Through the GFTA mechanism, the Jhpiego EGHS project will recruit a COVID 19 senior epidemiologist to support NPHIL and MOH in the surveillance data collection, analysis and use.

The National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL) was conceived and launched by the Government of Liberia to be the institution responsible for public health services in Liberia. NPHIL’s mission is to strengthen existing infection prevention and control efforts, laboratories, surveillance, infectious disease control, public health capacity building, response to outbreaks, and monitoring diseases with epidemic potential.   Due to the rapid and unexpected escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Liberia, a parallel COVID-19 surveillance, analytic, and response structure was established.  Three years later, NPHIL has indicated that integration of COVID-19 platforms into the routine integrated disease surveillance and response (IDSR) platform that NPHIL relies on for all other public health events of emergency concern is a priority consideration as the country enters the next phase of the pandemic.  Corresponding, other aspects of the COVID-19 response (such as the vaccination pillar) are being incorporated into the Ministry of Health’s routine immunization platform.

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, Liberia’s readiness to detect COVID-19 likely will be integrated into routine and pre-pandemic platforms for surveillance and reporting.  A more effective surveillance and testing strategy may be helpful to increase Liberia to increase its vigilance for the earliest evidence of the emergence of a new COVID-19 genetic variant of concern or a seasonal spike in COVID-19 transmissibility.  The skills of a senior public health epidemiologist who has established successful surveillance systems will benefit MOH and NPHIL in defining and standing-up COVID-19 sentinel surveillance, while also transitioning routine COVID-19 testing and surveillance reporting protocols into Liberia´s regular Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response platform.

This position will be either six-month fixed term appointment or consultancy.

Expanded Surveillance

• Support NPHIL to establish routine reporting flows to manage COVID-19 data reported from community, public or private health facilities, and sentinel surveillance platforms
• Support NPHIL’s recent initiative to establish event-based surveillance (media monitoring, rumors, etc.)
• Assist NPHIL to develop standard data collection instrument for Call Center activity; regularly review and graph data to track increases in calls on particular topics
• Review and update the COVID-19/other surveillance M&E system and available SOPs when needed

Data Management, Data Analysis / Training

• Provide guidance and support on data management “best practices” for various Microsoft Office, commercial COVID-19-specific data platforms, and DHIS2-based platforms where surveillance and outbreak response data are managed
• Conduct a series of longitudinal, in-service training in data management, data analysis, and Excel (g., pivot tables) with progress between training advanced through competency-based exercises
• Offer capacity building to NPHIL staff through mentoring and coaching on:
  • Complex data analysis and their interpretation
  • Use of the findings for decision making
• Supports the NPHIL relevant team to conduct complex data analysis and use the findings to make decisions

Data Visualization, Publication, Presentation

• Assist with developing epidemiological reports for a variety of stakeholders and developing and maintaining dashboards to communicate the status of, and trends in, the local epidemic (e.g., weekly or monthly reports)
• In the context of approved national COVID-19 reporting channels, mentor NPHIL staff to produce disease-specific surveillance reports that include COVID-19
• Support NPHIL in its efforts to generate peer-reviewed publications related to COVID-19 field research activities (including but not limited to COVID-19 Knowledge Attitudes Practices surveys, COVID-19 seroprevalence surveys, etc.), and ensure that COVID-19 case epidemiology is successfully incorporate into NPHIL’s Annual IDSR Summary report

Selected expected deliverables

• In the context of approved national COVID-19 reporting channels, COVID-19 data is formally integrated into the routine surveillance data
• Standard data collection tools developed for call center
• SOPs for surveillance data developed
• Standardized weekly epidemiological reports developed
• Enhanced the NPHIL/ DIDE team on surveillance data analysis
• Established event-based surveillance

• Master’s degree or higher in Public Health, Epidemiology, Emergency Management, or Global Health; PhD. is preferred
• 5+ years of experience as an epidemiologist with both national and sub-national surveillance and outbreak response experience
• 5+ years in collecting, cleaning, analyzing, writing, publicizing, and communicating public health data to technical collaborators and lay audiences
• 5+ years of supervising, mentoring, or advising junior epidemiologists, trainees, or students
• Demonstrated expertise in the use of statistical or analytic software, which may include but is not limited to standard Microsoft Office suite, R, Python, SAS, SPSS, Stata, etc

• Medical or allied health professional degree, such as Doctor of Medicine, Nursing, Veterinarian, Pharmacist, etc.
• Graduate of field epidemiology training program that provided an in-service and didactic curriculum-based approach to professional skill-building
• 3+ years of experience working in the context of a resource-limited country context, preferably on the African continent
• Established track record of public health research and scientific writing, as evidence of successful publication of peer-reviewed research