PEPFAR reporting, HIS Policy and Reporting Alignment Specialist - South Africa

PEPFAR reporting, HIS Policy and Reporting Alignment Specialist -
South Africa

Company Profile
Palladium is a global company working to design, develop and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 3,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities.

Palladium develops and delivers innovative, locally relevant, evidence-based solutions to improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Since 1971, we have assisted governmental and non-governmental agencies, foundations, and the private sector by designing, implementing, and evaluating programs in HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, population and family planning, maternal and child health, infectious diseases, and gender. Palladium has deep expertise in policy and advocacy, research and strategic information, health markets and private sector engagement, modeling and economic analysis, patient monitoring and management/HMIS, strategic consulting, and program management.

Background
Palladium is implementing the USAID-funded Translating Data for Implementation (Data.FI) award. Data.FI is a $180 million, 5-year project which serves as USAID’s primary mechanism for data, technology, and health information systems to support HIV activities across strategic PEPFAR countries. Data.FI is part of a suite of large-scale global HIV programs that USAID has awarded and represents the next generation of HIV/AIDS programs. Data.FI plays a key role in USAID’s goals of helping partner countries on their Journey to Self-Reliance and transitioning local organizations to prime recipients of USG funding.

The overall goal of the Data.FI project is to improve global, regional, and national in-depth analyses of HIV epidemiologic and program data that can be directly applied to expedite the achievement of PEPFAR targets to attain and sustain control of the HIV epidemic. The focus also includes directly supporting host country governments and implementing partners to further enhance existing health information system platforms to inform management responses to well-defined gaps in HIV/AIDS programming. In order to ensure rapid access to high quality data, Data.FI works towards: accelerating data utilization to rapidly course correct and take to scale cost-effective and impactful activities, models and approaches required to attain and maintain HIV epidemic control; scaling and optimizing in-country health information system capabilities to collect, exchange, adapt, govern, and visualize information in order to track the attainment and maintenance of HIV epidemic control; and supporting the transition of prime funding and implementation to capable local partners.

Position Summary
Palladium, through Data.FI, is currently seeking an experienced and motivated short term, part time consultant to join our team as a PEPFAR Reporting, HIS Policy and Reporting Alignment Specialist to support the implementation of the revised Data.FI award in South Africa (SA) under the terms of the PEPFAR -GHSD Waiver.

Data.FI South Africa supports the National Department of Health Digital Health Unit (DHU) in its role of providing strategic leadership for the country’s Digital Health activities which includes as a critical core component activities to ensure availability of data to use in addressing its HIV epidemic and associated opportunistic diseases such as TB. Within this mandate, the DHU manages various health datasets and their associated data products, including the patient level HIV and TB dataset.

In the last four years, Data.FI South Africa has provided direct support to National DHU to enhance existing HIS platforms and governance, thereby informing management responses to well-defined gaps in HIV and TB programming and sustaining impact by supporting the transition of activities to local departments and partners through a central HIV and TB reporting service with custom analyses and user interfaces. A cornerstone of Data.FI's support in this area is driving efficiencies in HIV and TB program planning by making key data available for resource planning and decision making, as well as introducing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to automate manual tasks, thus saving on costly human resource costs through robust, future proof digital systems.

Another key component of this activity relates to the mandated and legislated PEPFAR quarterly, semi-annual and annual reporting. A critical element in PEPFAR's accountability to the American people, the PEPFAR Monitoring Evaluation and Reporting (MER) indicators for HIV and TB are drawn from this system and form the basis for PEPFAR’s annual reporting to Congress. These MER reports are produced by the NDOH DHU with key technical support from Data.FI South Africa.

It is essential for the MER data to be available in the USG DATIM reporting system for the USG Strategic Information teams to further process the data to inform internal program oversight and compliance. This includes the monitoring and resumption of reporting according to new updated guidelines, with specific guidance as stated in and informed by the PEPFAR-GHSD waiver.

The consultant requires technical expertise in health information systems policy development, systems design and implementation as well as health data flows and processes being able to guide the development of core strategic technical documents, direct knowledge management, hand-over and sustainability activities and contribute to the development of data analytics. The consultant must also support in the production of MER reporting requirements ensuring data completeness and quality, development and upkeep of data analytics products and stability and sustainability of data pipelines.

Primary Duties And Responsibilities

1. Ensure data completeness and quality
2. Lead the development of guidance material for the seamless management and maintenance of data pipelines and reporting platforms
3. Develop training materials on the updated MER 2.8.2 guidance for users of the MER reports.
4. Contribute to the updated USG-RSA data reporting SOP that manages the process and timelines for reporting MER indicators for South Africa.
5. Contribute to the conceptualisation and development of new data products, dashboards and special data requests to support PEPFAR program priorities.
6. As the HIS policy and reporting alignment specialist, support the ministry in the development of strategic national guidance documentation for the management of health HIS.
7. Support the development of a platform handover approach through the development of manuals, hackathons and indexed code repositories.
8. Provide advice to NDOH to support sustainable development and maintenance of health data infrastructure in line with public health guidance and HIS best practices.
9. Prepare a handover package and plan for dissemination of key information to relevant stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• A post graduate (NQF 9) qualification in Public Health, Informatics or Public Policy
• At least seven (7) years’ working experience with the public health sector at a middle/senior management level is necessary
• At least seven (7) years’ working experience in health data analysis, with knowledge of national indicator definitions
• At least six (6) years’ working experience in South African digital health and m-health activities
• Understanding of national, digital health data systems including TIER.Net, EDR Web, and the NDOH DHU digital ecosystem
• Strong knowledge of the South African National Indicator Data Set and the PEPFAR MER indicator definitions, alignments and variances
• Proven knowledge of health-focused software development and deployment in the South African context is also an advantage.
• Past experience in supporting health information systems as a consultant
• Past experience in drafting and managing the development of software, health information system, monitoring and evaluation documentation
• Proven expertise in developing and evaluating strategic plans, particularly those related to the public sector is also required.
• Excellent data analytics and report writing skills are necessary, including the ability to navigate, extract and synthesize data from various information systems and sources for high level reports.
• Experience working with large and varied health information systems is essential.
• Knowledge of Data Science supervised and unsupervised functions
• Knowledge of Azure platform features including ETL and user management features
• Demonstrated experience and knowledge of the NDOH DHU data ecosystem and pipeline
• Good communication (written and verbal) skills are required, along with good facilitation and negotiation skills.
• Demonstrable understanding of the public health, specifically the HIV and TB program, landscape in South Africa is highly advantageous.
• Knowledge and understanding of Results Based Management techniques is an advantage
• Experience with project management and stakeholder expectation management is highly advantageous.
• A driver’s license is required

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or for any other circumstance, please email our team at accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.

Safeguarding
We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused.

Our company provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics.

Please note that interviews will be conducted on a rolling basis.