Job Title: Regional Co-ordinator for the ODIN Wastewater Surveillance Project 

Company Name: The Global Health Network (TGHN)

Location: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 

About Us: The Global Health Network is a dynamic global community facilitating knowledge and skills exchange among healthcare workers and research teams, particularly in regions lacking research evidence. Recently designated as a WHO collaborating centre, it aims to strengthen community engagement and connect research with public health, ensuring locally driven research with actionable findings. 

Job Description: The regional coordinator will also support information dissemination, especially through The Global Health Network’s ODIN Hub. The regional coordinator will be based in DRC and will manage the day-to-day delivery of the initiatives outlined in WP 6 and 7 and be willing to support the other work packages. They will be operationally supported by The Global Health Network team. 

Key Responsibilities: 

  • Develop and implement a specific work plan for ODIN in your centre  

  • Organise and coordinate activities within the workplan, such as: context analysis, webinars and workshops, with the potential for seminars, meetings and webinars, sharing of resources, supported learning sessions and working groups 

  • Contribute to the development of new resources for the project 

  • Contribute to regular updates and reports on progress and achievements to date, and plans for the next deliverable, including lessons learnt that could be carried forward 

  • Ensure comprehensive capture and upload of relevant research materials, resources, and documentation to ODIN Hub 

Selection criteria: 

  • Hold a degree in any public health area or have professional equivalent experience.  

  • Proven ability in academic or scientific writing and communication skills 

  • A good command of written and spoken English, as the postholder will need to liaise with the global health team, and the team based in the UK 

How to Apply: Kindly send your CV to odin@tghn2.org 

Application Deadline: April 22nd 2024 

This role will be based with the local PI at the Department of Tropical Medicine at the University of Kinshasa.  

For detailed information about this role and its requirements, please see below:  

 

Job title 

Regional Coordinator for the ODIN Wastewater Surveillance Project 

Reporting to 

The local PI [Vivi Maketa]and the Scientific Coordinator[Paul Kingpriest, The Global Health Network] 

Location 

Department of Tropical Medicine at the University of Kinshasa 

Grade and salary 

[TBC] 

Hours 

18.75 hours per week (50% full-time equivalent) 

Contract type 

12 months  

Period 

Tentative period 

Overview of The Global Health Network 

The Global Health Network is a vast, global, and highly active community of practice (COP) of healthcare workers, research teams and health organisations. It is powerfully transferring know-how between diseases, regions, and types of research to deliver skills and methods that make research leadership accessible and feasible. This open and active ‘connecting up’ is guiding, supporting, and enabling research in diseases and communities where evidence is lacking. This happens through an interconnected network of regional centres and a sophisticated digital platform of diverse knowledge hubs that together work in-person and online to connect excellence, share knowledge and foster exchanges to accelerate research evidence and develop lasting capable and independent research teams.  

The Global Health Network exists within a decentralised franchise model of regional centres in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and the UK. partnerships allow for active knowledge exchange and skills-sharing, using the £5M digital structure of The Global Health Network, applying regional in-person systems and processes developed to drive active knowledge mobilisation to support research in any healthcare setting. 

The Global Health Network has recently been designated a WHO collaborating centre. This is based on our work with the Science Division of WHO and their mission to enable research in every healthcare setting and connect research with public health to make sure research is appropriate, locally driven, addressing local priorities, and that the findings can be taken up to deliver change. Community Engagement is a crucial element and therefore we can strengthen our work with WHO in this shared goal, working through the WHO regional offices and the Science Division to deliver this. 

ODIN Wastewater Surveillance Project 

Recently, TGHN and other collaborators from Europe and Africa were successfully awarded a grant by EDCTP to support project ODIN: “STRENGTHENING ENVIRONMENTAL SURVEILLANCE TO ADVANCE PUBLIC HEALTH ACTION”. The project will strengthen genomics and bioinformatics capacity, as well as database management skills for generating, maintaining, and querying large data sets, in sub-Saharan countries. Further, the project will develop a genomic surveillance system relying on environmental monitoring of major communicable disease agents in community wastewaters and other environmental samples (wells, rivers, soil). In a timely, socially and ethically acceptable anonymous manner, environmental surveillance can detect outbreaks of poverty-related pathogens, waterborne diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), as well as provide the means to convey this information to key stakeholders for efficient implementation of data-driven evidence for informed public health policies. By bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of leading experts and organisations within the fields of communicable disease epidemiology, microbiology, bioinformatics, water technology and environmental science, ODIN will provide an optimal research, development, capacity building, and implementation environment that will help set up a sustainable model for how genomics surveillance systems can be applied in sub-Saharan African conditions to support AMR surveillance as well as the provision of safe drinking water. 

We will achieve our goals, through the following objectives, which are reflected in the project’s work packages: 

  • Set up an environmental surveillance scheme for priority pathogens and AMR determinants to be piloted and utilised in local sub-Saharan communities, supporting SDG 3. (WP2) 

  • Develop a mobile wastewater and clean water surveillance system in order to efficiently and in a timely manner detect, gather data on, and report outbreaks in remote areas of the participating countries, contributing to rapid response. (WP3) 

  • Accelerate raw data processing and analysis through interactive, semi-automation, thus speeding up transfer of information regarding threat. (WP4) 

  • Set up a training program for improved capacity building that entails genome sequencing of environment samples and subsequent bioinformatics processing of the produced genomic data containing spatial and temporal trends in the occurrence of human pathogens in sub-Saharan countries. (WP6) 

  • Develop standards to support practices for sharing genomic data, including beyond national borders, for 

public health measures. (WP7) 

  • Strengthen health systems by process(es) on how the generated data will be transferred to key stakeholders 

(clinics, governments, policymakers, etc) for efficient and timely actions upon outbreaks or detection of 

contaminated water (WP4, WP6, WP7). 

  • Investigate, from an epidemiological and bacteriological angle, the role of different Vibrio species in causing 

Cholera(WP5). 

  • Reduce annual cases of disease, illness and death due to drinking water from contaminated sources by 

increasing awareness and providing protocols for efficient water and sanitation interventions, supporting SDG6(WP5). 

Responsibilities and Duties  

In order to achieve the above objectives, a Regional Coordinator for the ODIN Wastewater Surveillance Project will be recruited and under the supervision of the local PI and the Scientific Coordinator, you will: 

  • Develop and implement a specific work plan for ODIN in your centre 

  • Organise and coordinate activities within the workplan, such as: context analysis, webinars and workshops, with the potential for seminars, meetings and webinars, sharing of resources, supported learning sessions and working groups 

  • Make relevant contacts to raise awareness and inform stakeholders 

  • Contribute to the development of new resources for the project 

  • Attend training with our in-house digital team on how to use the content management system and project management systems 

  • Contribute to the upload of resources into the ODIN hub [insert URL] and social media platforms. 

  • Track centre activities and evaluate achievement of milestones and deliverables. 

  • Liaise with the site coordinator/Local PI, and TGHN to identify opportunities for delivery on WP 6 and 7 

  • Contribute to regular updates and reports on progress and achievements to date, and plans for the next deliverable, including lessons learned that could be carried forward 

  • Contribute to ODIN-related papers and conference attendances where necessary 

  • Represent ODIN and The Global Health Network at relevant meetings. 

  • Undertake any other reasonable duty appropriate to the role and grade that may be assigned by the team to support the functioning of the ODIN project. 

  • Support colleagues in developing and using systems, processes and frameworks for reporting activities and tracking the impact of our work 

  • Ensure comprehensive capture and upload of relevant research materials, resources, and documentation to ODIN Hub 

  • Participate in coordination/progress update (online) meetings with global colleagues and the UK operational team to ensure comprehensive knowledge sharing. 

The regional coordinator will also support information dissemination, especially through The Global Health Network’s ODIN Hub. The regional coordinator will be based in the country centre (insert institution) and will manage the day-to-day delivery of the initiatives outlined in WP 6 and 7 and be willing to support the other work packages. They will be operationally supported by The Global Health Network team. The coordinators will be key to: 

 (i) the embedded and iterative approach of framing the training and resource development around the needs of local partners 

(ii) the integration of capacity strengthening within the planned research and its evolution 

(iii) the participation of the individual institutions, which will greatly enhance this approach and increase its impact. 

Selection criteria   

Essential 

The ideal candidate will have some experience working in a healthcare setting and the research environment with excellent communication skills and experience in promoting capacity development and dissemination. 

  • Hold a degree in any area of public health or have professional equivalent experience. 

  • Experience in healthcare research settings in your country. 

  • Demonstrable ability to use technology in professional networking and knowledge-sharing 

  • Proven ability in academic or scientific writing and communication skills 

  • Enthusiasm for developing a web-based resource for learning and knowledge sharing. 

  • Strong and confident communicator with excellent presentation skills 

  • Strong organisational abilities and commitment to dedicated tasks.  

  • Ability to work independently and flexibly. 

  • A good command of written and spoken English, as the postholder will need to liaise with the global health team, and the team based in the UK (as well as wider European and Pan-African partners).  

  • Willingness to travel to Conferences or Training activities and other project-related activities.