United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
The Community and District Empowerment for Scale-up (CODES) research and learning project is an innovation-driven district-based approach that focuses on identifying how to take child survival interventions to scale, learning how to resolve bottlenecks to their access and coverage, and determining which set of evidence-based strategies are most likely to increase coverage at scale in the Uganda context. It is a five-year effort funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce child mortality. The initial proposal was developed jointly by the Ministry of Health, UNICEF and Karolinska Institute. The oversight of capacity building and learning within the project is being managed by UNICEF, and is being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Health, Child Fund International, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, ACODE and other partners. CODES is helping to build sustainable and scalable capacity of District Health Management Teams (DHMTs) to effectively implement existing national strategies, such as the ones on Quality Improvement and Child Survival. It deliberately rejects becoming a parallel process. In fact, one ‘innovation’ of the CODES project is showing how improved management capacity can spur more effective and efficient use of existing resources to truly implement what are often solid national strategies. CODES do place great emphasis, nonetheless, on actively seeking new approaches (e.g. mTrac, SMS-based client feedback through uReport) which have proved to be, or show promise to be, successful in the Ugandan context. The learning aspect of CODES accepts that improving quality and performance requires innovative approaches, if strategies are to be fully implemented and Universal Health Care (UHC) targets achieved.
Job Title: Project Manager (CODES)
Employment type: Full time
Country: Uganda
City / Location: Uganda
Job category: Medical/Health
Min. years of experience: 5 years
Minimum degree: Masters degree
Closing date: June 23, 2013 - 4pm
The Project Manager CODES will provide project management and technical support to the CODES project .
Lead effective and efficient planning, design and management of the CODES Project, including managing the CODES sub-contractors contracts (CFI/LSTM, ACODE, MUK/Karolinska Institutet), ensuring project delivery meets targeted goals and objectives
Liaising with the supply side and demand side subcontractors to work with the five (and 25 additional local governments after December 2013) local governments and ensure proper coordination of the planned district workshops and activities and to identify technical issues and coordinate technical assistance, in collaboration with RO, HQ and external TA for sub-contractors related to CODES methodologies and tools
Ensure timelines of activities and summary of progress to date is regularly updated,
Supporting secretariat functions for steering committee and technical advisory groups
Support to CODES operational research
Organizing, sending out agendas, and disseminating meeting notes for weekly/bi-weekly telephone conferences, quarterly steering committee meetings & monthly donor progress calls
Work with the Principal Investigator (PI) to provide dedicated day to day management of the CODES project
Coordinate, monitor and provide operational guidance to project sub-contractors, including work-plans and budgets: ACODE, CFI, LSTM, Karolinska Institutet, Makerere Univ. School of Public Health, etc.
Maintain up to date project budget with assistance from the Programme Assistant and PI
Update colleagues, partners and CODES Steering committee on progress via weekly email updates and monthly telephone conferences, including timely preparation of agendas and dissemination of meeting minutes, with needed actions clearly defined.
Lead monthly grant check-in calls with BMGF (HQ, CO, US Fund and KI) & CODES Steering Committee; including presentation of progress update and dissemination of minutes
Monitor progress on weekly and monthly project milestones, and proactively engage partners to minimize delays and other risks.
Conduct monitoring, quality assurance and support supervision site to the five implementing districts and generate reports.
Perform Secretariat function with PI on the CODES Steering Committee.
At least one implementation district visited per month, trip report developed and shared.
Prepare annual UNICEF and annual Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Reports:
Collate comments from sub-contractors
Draft basic content for reports
Work with PI to respond to any questions from US Fund for UNICEF
Provide sub-contractors technical backstopping and coordination during workshops and activities with DHMTS on use of CODES bottleneck analysis, causal analysis, and demand side analysis and quality improvement
Liaise with MBB support team (New Delhi and UNICEF NY) to support customization of district bottleneck analysis tool and management checklist
Liaise with CFI/LSTM and ACODE to ensure that district health management teams include activities address key identified bottlenecks in their annual health sector work plans for timely submission to the MoH
Identify and coordinate technical assistance to sub-contractors, related to project methodologies and tools
Work closely with MUK/KI Institute to update research protocol and agenda:
Liaise with HQ, MUK, KI, CFI/LSTM & ACODE to assess progress of research papers for peer-reviewed publication
Design & maintain spread sheet on status of all research papers
Revise and update M&E CODES Framework in consultation with partners
Contribute to design of CODES Wave 1 phase including research agenda, evaluation design and operational design
Documentation of lessons learned from CODES Wave 0 towards recommendation for scale up to Wave 1.
Liaise with CFI/LSTM and ACODE to promote opportunities to optimize potential synergies with other project (including those funded by BMGF and other partners) seeking improvement for district performance, such as Health for Poorest Populations (HPP), mTrac and similar efforts
Coordinate mHealth components of CODES with mTrac and Ureport focal points in UNICEF, ACODE and CFI/LSTM: Work with ACODE to support linking citizen report cards, community dialogues and uReport to capacity building efforts directed at community empowerment, social accountability and demand generation
How to apply:
All those interested in working with the United Nations UNICEF in Uganda should send their applications together with a detailed CV (resume) to:
The Human Resource Officer, UNICEF Kampala,
Plot 9 George Street. P.O Box 7047, Kampala Uganda
Or email to: ugderecruit@unicef.org