Public Health Associate

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 Associate 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.

Public Health Associate 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 Public Health Associate will support in the development, technical guidance, and oversight of the UNHCR’s Public Health strategy. The incumbent will 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 addition to extending support to integrated protection, CBP, RST, and other units.

Accountability

- UNHCR policies, standards, and procedures relating to Public Health are appropriately and consistently applied in the AoR.

- Adequate technical support is provided to the country operation in Public Health.

- Regular reporting on implementation progress and challenges is provided through UNHCR reporting channels.

Responsibilities Associated with 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.

- Perform scheduled inventories, stock verifications, and quality checks of medicines and medical supplies at warehouse and camp-level health facilities.

- Support pharmacy and medicine management processes, including monitoring stock levels, ensuring compliance with UNHCR and national pharmaceutical standards, and preventing stockouts or expiries.

- Analyse medicine consumption patterns to identify trends, gaps, and risks, and provide recommendations for corrective action or optimization.

- Review and approve implementing partners’ monthly medicine and medical supplies requisitions in line with approved Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and programmatic needs.

- Work with Pharmacy Monitoring Software (PMS) or other digital tools to track pharmaceutical consumption patterns, supply chain indicators, and partner reporting compliance.

- Mitigate, document, and follow up on complaints received by UNHCR related to health protection, ensuring timely escalation and resolution in coordination with partners.

Qualifications and Experience :

a. Education

Minimum Bachelor of Science in Medical Sciences, preferably with a Masters in Public Health, or other relevant qualifications.

b. Work Experience

Essential

• Demonstrated capacity to support transitions in the delivery of health services.

• Experience in ensuring complementarity of activities supported by different partners within the same health facility. Demonstrated capacity to undertake data analysis and clear and concise analysis and reporting.

Desirable

• Knowledge in current UNHCR public health programs.

• Expertise in implementing UNHCR’s Public Health response in contexts of limited/reduced resources and/or protracted refugee response.

The Public Health Associate 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 guidance and support to partners on UNHCR’s responses in public health.

S/he will contribute to advancing the concepts found in UNHCR’s Global Public Health Strategy as well as the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the mainstreaming/inclusion of refugees into national health programmes and systems.

The Public Health Associate 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.

• Assist the implementation of public health programmes with partners and health authorities in a multi-sectoral and coordinated manner.

• Assist efforts towards public health programming towards greater inclusion and access of refugees to national health systems.

• Participate in relevant coordination and collaboration structures as requested.

• 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 in the use of the relevant UNHCR Health Information System suite of tools and surveys to support in analysis, interpretation, reporting and use of public health data.

• Assist in capacity strengthening of partners to ensure the technical integrity of public health programmes.

• 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.

• Assist in efforts to enhance 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. 

• Assist in the process of preparing and processing medicine and medical supply orders with partners.

• Assist in ensuring community engagement and community participation in health programming.

• Monitor and support compliance with UNHCR Public Health Administrative Instruction/standard operating procedures.

• Assist in 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. 

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

For G6 - 3 years relevant experience with High School Diploma; or 2 years relevant work experience with Bachelor or equivalent or higher

Medicine;                            Nursing;               Public Health;                     Epidemiology;

(Certificates and Licenses marked with an asterisk* are essential)

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

MD-HIV/AIDS situation management, MD-Reproductive Health, PH-Community Health-Health Data Collection/Analysis/Interpretation, PH- Public Health Epidemiology, PM-Project monitoring and evaluation

Education

Certifications

Epidemiology - Other, Medicine - Other, Nursing - Other, Public Health - Other

Work Experience

Only Shortlisted candidates will be contacted for the Assessment Exercises for the recruitment of the position, which may include Written/Technical tests and/or Interviews, as applicable for recruitment of the position.This position doesn't require a functional clearance