Assistant Public Health Officer

1. General Background

On August 25, 2017, an outbreak of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State forced over 650,000 Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh's Cox’s Bazar district. This influx more than tripled the existing registered Rohingya population of 212,500, bringing the total population in Bangladesh to approximately 1.2 million, with new arrivals continuing to this day.

The rapid scale and pace of this influx overwhelmed the capacity of the two established refugee camps, as well as local authorities and humanitarian actors on the ground. New arrivals settled spontaneously, and makeshift shelters spread along roads and available land in Ukhiya and Teknaf. The resulting congestion has posed significant challenges to access essential services, protection, public health, and safety, including risks of flooding, landslides, and fire.

UNHCR is seeking an experienced Public Health national officer to support the implementation of public health interventions in low resource refugee settings as well as support in implementing UNHCR’s phased transition from its current engagement in the Public Health Sector in the Rohingya Refugee Response.

Responsibilities based on Operational Context:

- Play a key role in facilitating and supporting the way forward in the progressive transition of UNHCR’s engagement in the Public Health Sector in the Rohingya Refugee Response.

- Support in the coordination and handing over the coordination role of the Community Health Working Group (CHWG) within the Cox’s Bazar health sector coordination structure. This includes: - Strengthening and supporting other partners to play an enhanced role– Setting strategic priorities based on contextual needs of Rohingya refugees and host communities.

- Mapping community health worker (CHW) coverage across camps and host areas. - Identifying and implementing capacity building opportunities for CHWs, including harmonized training packages.

- Provide support to Resettlement colleagues by ensuring that refugees undergo quality and timely Medical Assessment Forms (MAFs) processing, aligned with UNHCR global standards and operational realities in Bangladesh.

- Support the Registration Unit through tracking and verification of newborn and death registration in the camps, troubleshooting bottlenecks, and working with government authorities such as RRRC and local health offices to strengthen processes.

Essential

• Solid experience in coordination and stakeholder engagement to achieve better public health outcomes.

• Experience in coordination of/supporting transitions in the delivery of health services.

The Assistant Public Health Officer is a member of a multidisciplinary team and contributes to ensuring that UNHCR's public health programmes meet minimum UNHCR and global health standards in order to minimise avoidable morbidity and mortality among forcibly displaced and stateless persons and towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Public health programmes include primary health care, secondary health care, sexual and reproductive health (including HIV), nutrition, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS).

The incumbent provides effective and guidance and support to partners on UNHCR’s responses in public health.

S/he advances the concepts found in UNHCR’s Global Public Health Strategy as well as the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and applies a humanitarian-development nexus lens to UNHCR public health programming and contributes to advancing the mainstreaming/inclusion of refugees into national health programmes, advocacy for refugees’ inclusion into national universal health coverage plans including health insurance and other social protection schemes.

The Assistant Public Health Officer is usually supervised by a more senior public health staff or in the absence thereof, by operations/programmes staff.

All UNHCR staff members are accountable to perform their duties as reflected in their job description. They do so within their delegated authorities, in line with the regulatory framework of UNHCR which includes the UN Charter, UN Staff Regulations and Rules, UNHCR Policies and Administrative Instructions as well as relevant accountability frameworks. In addition, staff members are required to discharge their responsibilities in a manner consistent with the core, functional, cross-functional and managerial competencies and UNHCR’s core values of professionalism, integrity and respect for diversity.

• Provide support for the implementation of public health programmes in a multi-sectoral and coordinated manner in cooperation with government, UN agencies, NGOs, and other humanitarian and development partners with due consideration to the approaches outlined in the Global Compact on Refugees, health-related pledges linked to the Global Refugee Forum and in support of the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG3.

• Support a strategic approach to public health towards greater inclusion and access of refugees to national health systems including social health protection as applicable.

• Participate in relevant coordination and collaboration structures.

• Participate in emergency responses to new refugee influxes and disease outbreaks.

• Support gathering information for relevant assessments and identification of needs.

• Work closely with programme and other units as applicable in programme planning and monitoring.

• Support intersectoral collaboration throughout all stages of programme cycle between public health, and other sectoral areas to promote synergies and maximise impact.

• Assist with the implementation of relevant UNHCR Health Information System suite of tools and surveys to support in analysis, interpretation, reporting and use of public health data as well as linkage/integration with national data systems including disaggregation by nationality.

• Support capacity strengthening of UNHCR and its implementing partners to ensure the technical integrity of public health programmes in a coordinated, multi-sectoral way.

• Support the identification and management of risks and seek to seize opportunities impacting objectives in the area of responsibility. Ensure decision making is risk based in the functional area of work. Raise risks, issues and concerns to a supervisor or to relevant functional colleague(s).

• Perform other related duties as required.

• Support public health emergency preparedness and response planning.

• Support the technical integrity of health care services and that they are based on Ministry of Health, UNHCR and/or internationally recognized and most up-to-date standards and policies.

• Support the process for preparing and processing medicine and medical supply orders with partners.

• Ensure community engagement and community participation in health programming.

• Monitor and support compliance with, and integrity of, all UNHCR Public Health Administrative Instruction/standard operating procedures and alerting the manager of any issues.

• Support the coordination of public health programmes across the regional bureau and with country operations including assimilation and documentation of better practice/lessons learnt for dissemination.

• Ensure appropriate technical advice and support (including missions) to country operations, in all aspects of public health service delivery, including in emergencies and in line with UNHCR’s policy and guidance.

• Assess, analyse public health data and provide relevant support on the technical quality of public health programming in the operations.

• Support effective collaborative approaches across the departments in the bureaux and with HQ.

For P1/NOA - 1 year relevant experience with Undergraduate degree; or no experience with Graduate degree; or no experience with Doctorate degree

Medicine              Medical Science                 Medical Doctor

Nursing                Public Health                      Epidemiology                     or other relevant field.

Experience in public health programming as well as understanding of health systems and health system building blocks. Experience with data collection and analysis in position(s) where the ability to draft clear, concise documentation was essential.

Experience in public health emergency preparedness and response. Experience in humanitarian settings. Experience with coordination and stakeholder engagement to achieve public health goals. Experience with health information systems. Experience with the provision of quality-assured medicines and medical supplies. 

PM-Project monitoring and evaluation

PH-Public Health Epidemiology

MD-HIV/AIDS situation management

MD-Reproductive Health

PH-Community Health - Health Data Collection/Analysis/Interpretation

(Functional Skills marked with an asterisk* are essential)

For International Professional and Field Service jobs: Knowledge of English and UN working language of the duty station if not English.

For National Professional jobs: Knowledge of English and UN working language of the duty station if not English and local language.

For General Service jobs: Knowledge of English and/or UN working language of the duty station if not English.

All jobs at UNHCR require six core competencies and may also require managerial competencies and/or cross-functional competencies. The six core competencies are listed below.

Skills

Global Health, Global Public Health, Health Protection, MD-Health Information Systems (HIS), MD-HIV/AIDS situation management, MD-Reproductive Health, Multilingualism, PH-Community Health-Health Data Collection/Analysis/Interpretation, PH- Public Health Epidemiology, PM-Project monitoring and evaluation

Education

Bachelor of Arts: Epidemiology, Bachelor of Arts: Medical Doctor, Bachelor of Arts: Medical Science, Bachelor of Arts: Medicine, Bachelor of Arts: Nursing, Bachelor of Arts: Public Health

Certifications

Work Experience

Only shortlisted candidates who meet the required qualifications will be contacted for the assessment exercise.This position requires Functional Clearance