Panama: Country Associate, Central America

Organization: Clinton Health Access Initiative
Country: Panama
Closing date: 15 Jan 2017

Founded in 2002 by President William J. Clinton, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to strengthening integrated health systems around the world and expanding access to care and treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria and other illnesses. Based on the premise that business oriented strategy can facilitate solutions to global health challenges, CHAI acts as a catalyst to mobilize new resources and optimize the impact of these resources to save lives, via improved organization of commodity markets and more effective local management. By working in association with governments and other NGO partners, CHAI is focused on large scale impact and, to date, CHAI has secured lower pricing agreements for treatment options in more than 70 countries. In addition, CHAI's teams are working side-by-side with over 30 governments to tackle many of the largest barriers to effective treatment and care.

Malaria is one of the world's most important causes of illness, death, and lost economic productivity. Over the past decade, dramatic increases in donor funding have facilitated scale-up of effective interventions to prevent, diagnosis, and treat malaria. This investment has successfully reduced the burden of malaria in many settings, and some countries have begun planning to eliminate it altogether. Yet these gains are fragile: global funding for malaria remains short of what is needed, last decade's rapid growth in malaria financing appears to have halted, and resistance to insecticides and drugs threatens to set back efforts. The great majority of the growth in funding for malaria programs has come from potentially volatile international donors rather than from domestic contributions, making the sustainability of recent gains an open question.

CHAI provides direct management and technical support to countries around the globe to strengthen their malaria programs and reduce the burden of this preventable, treatable disease. We support governments to scale up effective interventions for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance, with the goals of sustainably reducing the number of malaria-related illnesses and deaths worldwide in the short-term and accelerating progress towards malaria elimination in the long term.

The Country Associate will:

Work with the National Malaria Program in the target country and the CHAI global malaria team to conduct a rapid country assessment to identify the technical, operational and financial requirements for sustainably achieving elimination
Lead the assembly and compilation of epidemiological, operational, and financial data
Coordinate evaluation of program processes, capacity, guidelines and field activities to define implementation barriers and identify areas that require strengthening to achieve elimination
Build strong working relationships with key stakeholders across government and non-governmental organizations
Work with the CHAI Regional Manager to develop a country work plan for delivering a coordinated program of support to the National Malaria Program
Support the National Malaria Program on the reorientation of their program towards elimination, specific activities will include:
Revising national malaria strategic plan
Updating national guidelines and policies to align with global elimination recommendations
Developing detailed operational plans, SOPs and associated training materials to build government capacity and support effective execution of malaria program
Identify key impediments to the successful execution of malaria elimination plans and work with malaria programs and other partners to develop solutions to rapidly address those bottlenecks
Work with the MoH and partners to accelerate introduction and uptake of new tools and diagnostics
Serve as a trusted adviser to the government on malaria elimination
Provide program and budget updates for progress reports and best practice sharing
Compile inputs and draft necessary presentations/reports for internal stakeholders and donors
Travel 40%-50% of the time to the respective Country
Bachelor's degree plus 3 – 5 years of work experience
Strong problem solving skills and analytical capabilities
Excellent written and oral communications skills
Detail-oriented with strong organization skills
Ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, set priorities, and work independently
Ability to be effective in high-pressure situations and work in a fast-paced, multicultural environment
Ability to be patient and thoughtful even under stress
High level of proficiency in relevant computer applications particularly Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
Spanish fluency (written and oral)