This Position is contingent

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is an international Humanitarian organization operating Water and Sanitation, Economic Development, Livelihoods, Capacity Building, Emergency Response, Health and Nutrition, and similar sectors in the regions of SNNPR, Somali, Oromia, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. Mercy Corps works with communities, public and private sectors to implement appropriate relief, recovery and development interventions. Mercy Corps Ethiopia invites motivated and qualified candidates to apply for the following vacant position.

Position Title:  HEALTH COORDINATOR

Duty Station:  NEGELLE, ETHIOPIA

Post Position: One

Program / Department Summary

The project is intended to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with under nutrition and increased illnesses of conflict induced communities who do not have access to primary health care services and basic nutrition services.

General Position Summary

The health coordinator is responsible for overall coordination, plan and implementation of emergency mobile health services related activities at local level using participatory and community based approaches. S/he is also responsible to provide technical support and guidance at local level to Woreda experts and other staffs working in the area of primary health care services at facility and outreach service delivery point. S/he is also responsible for compiling monthly mobile health and nutrition service reports, weekly progress updates and documentation and sharing of best practices and lessons learnt at Zonal level.  The Health coordinator will directly report to Emergency Program Manager.   In addition, the position holder is expected to cooperate and support the CMAM coordinator to provide integrated emergency health and nutrition services for the affected community.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Strategy & Vision

·         Collaborate with other team member for effective integration between other services like Nutrition and health services 

·         Collaborate with Local authorities and other partners to harmonize different efforts for better impact and sustainability.

·         Able to learn and update his/ her information or knowledge to adapt the changing situation and context

Program Management

·         Ensure the implementation of mobile health and nutrition activities in the field as defined on the work plan in coordination with field level technical staff

·         Ensure quality of the mobile health and nutrition service at outreach mobile clinics through strengthening the capacity of the staffs and ensuring the availability of supplies in collaboration with local government, MC Head office team and other stakeholders.

·         Come up with a comprehensive capacity development plan for partners based on the identified skill gaps, arrange and facilitate IMNCI training at zonal or woreda level in collaboration with other team and zonal health bureau

·         Evaluate the effectiveness of capacity building trainings and design continues  follow-up plan to  fill the skill gaps

·          Organize regular evaluation meetings for the team members to evaluate their progress and design a method to improve the identified gaps

·         Ensure the monthly health and nutrition progress report delivered on time to the program manager, zonal health offices and other stakeholder.

·         Developing effective quality improvement plan and approaches for improved quality of mobile health and nutrition services in collaboration with government and other partners.

·         Ensure that lessons and best practices derived from project implementation are well articulated, documented and shared for others to improve the future response

·         Ensure proper nutrition and medical management provided to the beneficiaries according to the National protocols.

·          Effectively manage the planned project activities to ensure the expected services are delivered on-time, on-budget and to the expected quality.

·         Ensure that minimum standards of technical quality are met and services are delivered in all mobile clinics as per the expected standard.

·         Monitor program activities to ensure that treatment centres achieve acceptable performance indicators

·         Preparing and deliver monthly and quarterly reports on overall health and nutrition activities.

·         Ensure adequate supplies for each sites are delivered and follow up on other logistics requirements and job-aid materials for all health and nutrition activities

Team Management

·         Be directly responsible for the technical guidance, leading, managing and coordinating of the team to provide standardized mobile health and nutrition service.

·         Providing technical support for MC mobile and zonal/ woreda government health staffs on the provision of comprehensive primary health care services and support the coordination between the mobile health and nutrition team with the static services providers through strong communication and referral linkage and follow up.

·         Closely work with the field staff in the planning the implementation of the local capacity building activities

·         Provided formal and on job training and supportive supervision for Mercy corps woreda level staffs and government health workers.

·         Coaches and supervises the CMAM officer, OTP/SC Nurses, Mobile health and nutrition team for integrating IYCF practice promotion activities to their daily health and nutrition works.

Finance & Compliance Management

N/A

Influence & Representation

·         Liaise with concerned government authorities and ensure the programme strategy, objectives and activities are understood, agreed and appropriate communication channel is in place

·         Participating in the Zonal/ Regional health and Nutrition Technical Working Group meetings, develop meeting agendas, documentation and dissemination of the technical working group meetings action point and recommendations.

·         Liaise and coordinate with local stakeholders and MoH personnel regularly, reporting to them and giving them updates on activities.

·         Collaborate with the potential partners on the field (health centres, health posts, committee leaders) to improve the coverage and the efficiency of the programs.

·         Collaborate with partners where possible (e.g. UNICEF, WHO, WFP etc in nutrition/health assessments in the area that may have an impact on our programs).

Security

·         Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.

·         Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

Organizational Learning 

·         As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

·         Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically
to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

·         Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

Knowledge and Experience

• BSC, MPH/ MSC degree in public Health or Nursing and over 8 years of practical experience in emergency health and nutrition of which more than 4 years of NGO experience preferably on mobile health and nutrition intervention for pastoralist community.
• Knowledge and practical experience of IMNCI/ICCM, maternal health, child health and CMAM intervention during emergency situation
• Skill in coordinating similar project  in pastoralist community or people living in dispersed geography  locations
• Knowledge and practical experience in implementation and coordination of community based emergency  health and nutrition response
• Ability to plan and organize work independently with less follow up able to give attention all details and show initiative in completing tasks and projects in a timely manner
• Supervisory skills with proven ability to manage a demanding workload
• Experience on facilitating training particularly IMNCI and CMAM trainings.
• Demonstrated Computer skills in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
• Excellent spoken and written English languages and local languages of the project area is is a plus.
• Ability and willingness to frequently travel to villages and willingness to reside in rural areas

Success Factors

• Willingness and capacity to be flexible and accommodating when faced with difficult and frustrating working conditions like long distance
• Good interpersonal and communication skills
• Experience in closely working with regional, Zonal and Woreda Health
• Ability to prepare program reports Knowledge in local language;
• Communication skill, good human relations
• Firm belief in teamwork, gender equality