Malaria Elimination Technical Officer

At Akros, we bring innovative ideas for gathering and using data to development challenges through a “boots on the ground” approach. We’ve built our organizational culture and nuanced approach to implementation by being where our work is: in Southern Africa. Akros has been supporting government and partner counterparts from our home base in Lusaka, Zambia for over 10 years. These close, on the ground, partnership has helped to contextualize our work and to ensure that we are only scaling the ideas and approaches which will work and will be sustained in under-resourced settings over time.

Although Akros has developed surveillance and information systems across multiple sectors, Akros’ roots are in malaria prevention and control. We have developed and implemented malaria surveillance and response systems that are quantifiable pushing the needle further towards malaria elimination.

Our malaria portfolio is growing. Therefore, we are seeking a skilled MPH- or PhD-level technician who can support continued innovation, contextualization and implementation of malaria surveillance and response platforms operating at decentralized and central levels.  The Malaria Elimination Technical Officer would backstop a number of our malaria–related programs. The position is based in Lusaka, Zambia, with frequent travel to Rwanda, across sub-Saharan Africa, Honduras, and Haiti. More than 60% travel is anticipated.

Akros, in partnership with Ona, is redefining intervention precision with Reveal, formerly mSpray. Reveal uses geospatial information to manage household-level interventions, like indoor residual spraying, insecticide treated net distribution, reactive case detection, and mass drug administration, to ensure accurate and effective coverage. The Reveal tool is currently supporting three separate programs at Akros. The Malaria Elimination Technical Officer will support Reveal-related activities across all three programs concurrently.

Specific Responsibilities

• Work alongside spray teams to implement Reveal in rural communities according to program protocols.
• Lead Training-of-Trainers activities for implementing partners on Reveal use in the field, how to train health workers and district-level decision makers, and data use for decision making.
• Liaise with National Malaria Control Programs and in-country implementing partners across targeted countries to build capacity for Reveal use, facilitate integrations with existing NMCP datasets, and guide field protocol training and operational management for community health workers and spray operators who are administering interventions.
• Conduct assessments across various countries to evaluate existing malaria elimination protocols and map them to customized Reveal system configuration to support intervention management.
• Working alongside the Reveal team to identify market opportunities across target countries and proactively seek partnerships.
• Document best practices for system configuration, protocol design, and end user training.
• Represent Akros and Reveal to NMCPs, implementing partners, and donors around the globe.
• Lead in translating intervention protocol workflows to Reveal configuration specifications.
• Propose product feature requests needed to support a new workflow and work with global design team to brainstorm, define, and prioritize these requests.
• Actively participate in design team discussions of new product features. Source feedback from field operators and NMCPs.
• Work with informatics team and subcontractors to test mockups and high-fidelity prototypes in new countries and against new NMCP protocols.
• With research team, develop impact metrics and indicators for new priority workflows and ensure current workflows are kept up-to-date as protocols or indicators change.
• Influence best practices for CHW/Spray Operator training.
• Contribute to business development efforts as appropriate and requested.
• Other duties as assigned

Qualifications

Akros employs passionate, results-orientated self-starters who are willing to take the plunge with us.  We are an energetic, fast moving team who often have to divide and conquer to get the job done. We are looking for people to invest in, to learn from, and to share and grow our lessons learned so far. And we are looking for those who can bring new ideas, new perspectives and new bursts of energy and innovation to our team. We have a deep history of people coming to Akros, coming alongside our founders, supporting the same vision they are seeing: to make tangible impact in sustainable ways for the vulnerable populations we are working among. Many past employees or fellows have created a lasting legacy at Akros through their own innovations which we have helped expand, and in some cases take to scale. If you have an idea that is going to create impact on global health and it fits within our wheelhouse – we are willing to help take that idea to fruition.

The appropriate candidate will possess:

• At least 5 years of strong public health experience including malaria epidemiology, entomology or related field.
• Knowledge about neglected tropical diseases considered a plus.
• Knowledge and past experience setting up or maintaining malaria elimination structures including reactive case detection, entomology, foci investigation, or other malaria interventions.
• Demonstrated data system design and data visualization expertise.
• A depth of international travel experience and past positions working in cross-cultural environments
• Ability to learn new topics and settings quickly and turn that learning around to create solutions to problems
• Experience operating in a developing world context (if international)
• Technical, field-based implementation experience
• Technical writing capability
• Demonstrated ability to operate with minimal instruction in a fast-paced environment
• French or Portuguese speaking and writing proficiency

Useful skills will also include

• Experience working with a range of government stakeholders
• Training a variety of audiences
• Data analysis using mainstream statistical packages (Stata preferred)
• GIS expertise and use of GIS tools such as qGIS and ArcGIS for spatial epidemiology
• Information system design would be a bonus

Location and Term

Contract runs through December 2019 with the possibility for extension with performance and funding availability. The position is based in Lusaka, Zambia, with frequent travel to Rwanda, across sub-Saharan Africa, Honduras, and Haiti. More than 60% travel is anticipated.

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