Job Details

Job Description

Public Health Intelligence Officer

Zambia National Public Health Institute

Job Title:   Public Health Intelligence Officer

Reports to: Director- Strategic Planning and Information Management

Location:  Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI)

Fixed-term Employment: Through August 31, 2026, with possibility of extension

The Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) has the mandate to lead health security for the Republic of Zambia. Resolve to Save Lives, a US-based global public health organization, works closely with Ministries of Health and national public health institutes in Africa to strengthen epidemic preparedness capacity, accelerate disease detection and response, and use data effectively to inform action. ZNPHI is collaborating with Resolve to Save Lives on a new surveillance program to enhance disease and contextual/risk data through strengthened surveillance and innovations in epidemic intelligence, effective use of existing and emergent data throughout the event lifecycle, and development of data tools and products that support key decision-makers from communities, the health sector, and government bodies.

ZNPHI seeks to recruit a suitably qualified and experienced person to be appointed as Director, Strategic Planning and Information Management (SPIM) under this collaborative project.

Job Purpose:

The Public Health Inteliigence Officer (PHIO) will serve as a liaison between Strategic Planning & Information Management (SPIM), Surveillance Disease Intelligence (SDI), and the Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) directorates. The role will ensure that there are no information or programmatic lapses in the flow of activities, data and reports among the key clusters feeding information into the Public Health Emergence Operations Center.  The PHIO will ALSO be responsible for monitoring and evaluation to ensure that planned activities are in concordance with the broad institutional strategic plan.

Core Duties and Responsibilities:

• Support planning for prevention, preparedness, early detection, response, and recovery activities pertaining to disease outbreak

• Support implementation of surveillance through the components of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) that include Event-Based Surveillance (EBS) Indicator-based surveillance (IBS), Community Based Surveillance and Sentinel Surveillance

• Participate in conceptualization and development of SDI and EPR programs to ensure synergy with the structure and workflows in SPIM
• Collaborate with other SPIM and other directorates (including SDI and EPR) to analyze M&E data and develop data products (e.g., briefs, bulletins, dashboards) that present information to different audiences to inform public health decision-making

• Participate and support twice-weekly SDI and EPR epi-intelligence meetings

• Ensure and coordinate access to the key data variables SPIM needs to generate critical public health insight 
• Ensure effective coordination of data use across the various directorates

• Actively work with teams to review the quarterly and annual activity plans and set targets that will address performance goals of the clusters

• Work with teams to set key performance indicators and work to apply the 7-1-7 framework in evaluating programmatic effectiveness in response to specific epidemic responses

• Work with the Chief Informatics Officer to develop and implement protocols for the collection, cleaning, storage, and analysis of health-related data.

• Prepare and disseminate regular reports on public health indicators and data-driven insights.

• Responsible for maintaining the feedback loop on performance of the various cluster teams and working through performance improvement plans

• Participate in the development and implementation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), guidelines, tools and manuals

• Ensure optimal utilization of information technology tools for data collection, analysis, and reporting in order to ensure accurate data collection for decision making.

• Work closely with the Chief Informatics Officer to ensure the integration of emerging technologies to enhance data management and analysis capabilities.

• Develop training programs to enhance the data management, analysis and interpretation skills of Zambia National Public Health Institute staff

• Develop expertise and super user role of systems and applications (e.g. dashboards, eIDSR, ZEBRA) used by ZNPHI surveillance and response staff; support trainings and issue resolution as needed
• Track timely implementation of workplans and provide ongoing feedback support to teams

• Other duties as may be assigned by the Supervisor.

Qualifications & Experience

• Full Grade 12 School Certificate with minimum five O level credits including English and Mathematics
• Bachelors Degree in Public Health, Epidemiology, Health Informatics, Demography, Library and Information Science or related field.
• Masters Degree in Public Health, Epidemiology, Health Informatics or related field
• Experience in data analysis, ideally with surveillance or routine programmatic data
• Experience translating data into information and developing data products (e.g., presentations, briefs, bullets) designed to inform decision-making
• Experience working with health data, including infectious diseases or other public health intelligence, is desirable
• Experience making graphs and charts in Microsoft Excel is required
• Experience with an analytic software package (e.g. SAS, Stata, R) is desirable
• Experience developing dashboards (e.g., PowerBi, Tableau) is desirable
• Experience with GIS software (ArcGIS, QGIS) is desirable

Knowledge and Skills

• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Team player
• Excellent interpersonal and public relation skills
• Capacity in decision-making and problem-solving

Please submit your cover letter and resume by February 2, 2024.