The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their lives.
Health programs represent the largest single sector within which IRC currently operates, constituting approximately 45% of the international budget and with activities in 25 countries. IRC health programs worldwide are engaged in the direct provision of health care, safe drinking water, and sanitation support to beneficiaries where needed. Currently, IRC supports or manages 75 hospitals, 1,256 health centers, and 788 health posts through a network of over eight hundred public health and clinical staff employed by IRC country programs. The facility-based care is complemented by community-level primary health care work implemented by about 9,000 community health workers.
Job overview
Emergency Health is a program area at the IRC that sits within the Emergency Humanitarian Action Unit (EHAU), and concurrently feeds into IRC’s Health Unit. With few predictable and effective health service providers in emergencies, there are major gaps in scale and scope to provide effective and timely health interventions in emergencies to crisis-affected populations. IRC intends to fill a niche in this field, branding itself as a fast, predictable, and effective provider of critical health and WASH (Water, Sanitation, Hygiene) services in emergencies, aligned with IRC’s 2024 Emergency Health Strategy, as well as the EHAU Strategy Action Plan, IRC’s Health Strategy, and IRC’s Strategy 100.
The Emergency Health Technical Advisor will work under the supervision and close mentorship of the Emergency Health Senior Technical Advisor to provide robust and efficient support for emergency health activities and interventions at the IRC across the emergency response continuum. They will spend a significant proportion of their time providing emergency health capacity strengthening, preparedness, readiness, and response support and delivering technical and strategic guidance during country-led emergency responses, as well as coordinating additional support across the Health Unit and other technical units and sectors. The Technical Advisor will also serve as a resource for EHAU’s deployed Emergency Health Emergency Response Team (ERT) Coordinators and Emergency Surge Team (EST) members, providing support on epidimiology, partnerships and data collection tools/systems and technical resources, as needed. This role will lead epidemiology and public health analysis for the Emergency Health Team. Finally, the incumbent will be the central focal point for Emergency Health’s Measurement, Evaluation, Analysis and Learning, and will coordinate global initiatives in the emergency health sphere, including tools and strategic guidance development and refinement, advocacy, research, partnerships, business development, frameworks, and anticipatory guidance.
Major responsibilities
Data Management, System, Tools, and Learning (40%)
• Provide epidemiologic context to emergency health crises by surveilling classified public health emergencies including outbreaks and communicating epidemiologic concerns across teams. Lead epidemiology support across the organization to advise on decision-making. Epidemiologic competencies for this position include being able to analyze, interpret, and discuss epidemiological measures of disease outbreaks and explain to non-technical collaborators in decision-making context.
• Support standardization of emergency health M&E systems/practices, epidemiological data sourcing and monitoring, systematization of data sharing, and centralized data analysis and knowledge management, including the use of epidemiologic databases and surveillance modalities (EWARN, GOARN (Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network), etc.) Advise on methodology that is complementary to M&E, specifically in emergency responses.
• Coordinate and maintain Health emergency response resources including but not limited to STEP, emergency rapid needs assessment tools, technical tools and libraries/dashboards with ERT support.
• Complete a biannual report of Health in Emergencies Learnings from both primary and available secondary data.
• Support health analysis across emergencies, including trend analyses across health programs in delivery, and as requested for regional and country programs engaged with emergency response and preparedness activities.
Partnerships (30%)
• Ensure program quality, accountability and consistency in emergency and outbreak response programming led by IRC’s local and national partners by providing remote and occasionally in person technical assistance, training and socializing systems and tools.
• Directly participate in or support deployed Health Coordinators to contribute to Partner Capacity Analysis (PCAs) and the subsequent development of partner support plans for emergency health program activities
• Review partner technical tools, reports, and data; recommend adaptations or process improvements as required.
• Adapt IRC direct implementation emergency tools and systems for partner use in line with identified needs and requests.
• Support deployed Emergency Health Coordinators to effectively backstop and provide technical guidance to partners.
• Champion a culture of effective and respective partnerships across the Emergency Health team. Promote partner-led programming in line with IRC’s “why not partner?” approach.
• Support the identification of strategic health partnerships with NGOs and government entities as part of emergency preparedness efforts.
• Ensure that partnership considerations are incorporated in program design and proposal development and that health partners are proactively engaged in program development efforts. Ensure appropriate budget resourcing for health partner projects.
• Become an expert on, promote and apply the IRC’s PEERS (Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System) toolkit. Contribute to building a strong understanding of PEERS throughout the Emergency Health team. Keep up to date with IRC PEER standards and practices.
Country Support (20%)
• As required, deploy to support emergency health programming or outbreak response start-up in complex or large-scale emergencies (20% of time and maximum 6 weeks for single deployment). This is inclusive of, but not limited to, responsibilities such as:
o Rapid needs assessments, evaluation/learning efforts, or other accountability support functions;
o Emergency Health Technical positions within a complex response;
o Following an emergency response, work with Country Programs to evaluate health response, collect lessons learned, and support subsequent preparedness actions to address identified gaps.
• Advise and train IRC and/or IRC partners on emergency health tools and resources for emergency preparedness, early action and response, as needed.
Grant Management (10%)
• Lead the development, review and submission of strategic proposals and concept notes around IRC’s innovative programming related to health in emergencies, aligned with the Emergencies SAP, Emergency Health strategy and other identified strategic priorities.
• Provide support to emergency health response and preparedness awards, inclusive of awards focused on subawards to partners (maximum 1 per year).
Team Culture
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with EHAU, TechEx and Regional colleagues and continually promote a culture of partnership and collaboration
• Cultivate and maintain a positive, collaborative, safe and protective work environment, while additionally setting an example of ‘One IRC’-way of working within the team, EHAU and the wider organization
• Contribute to efforts across EHAU to promote gender equality, diversity and more inclusive practice across our programming and our ways of working
Key working relationships:
Position Reports to: Senior Technical Advisor of Emergency Health
Position directly supervises: Could potentially supervise occasional interns
Indirect reporting: N/A
Other contacts: Close working relationships with all sectors in the EHAU Quality in Emergencies (QiE) team, across EHAU and the Health Unit, (including Regionally aligned Health Unit TAs assigned to specific countries,) notably ERT/EST Health Coordinators, as well as the Preparedness, Response Management, and Deployment teams, and regional leadership and Country Program focal points.
Job requirements
Education: Master of Public Health, or equivalent, with background in Epidemiology, and Bachelor’s Degree in clinical, public health, or equivalent degree.
Work Experience: Approximately 7+ years of experience in health-related program development and implementation in humanitarian, post-conflict, or low-resource settings. Experience in epidemiology, monitoring, evaluation, and learning management, technical tools development and data analysis is required. Specific epidemiologic competencies include being able to:
• Calculate and interpret epidemiologic measures of disease outbreaks and be able to explain in easily digestible terms to non-technical collaborators in decision-making contexts.
• Discuss the following with non-technical collaborators: the etiology or cause of disease and its progression and its spread amid a population, determine the extent of disease, evaluate and recommend preventive and therapeutic measures for a disease outbreak.
• Global epidemic monitoring, evaluation, and learning management, technical tools development and data analysis and interpretation.
Field Experience: 4-5 years of field experience preferred, including at least 2 years in humanitarian settings
Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:
• Demonstrated expertise in health programming planning and implementation.
• Very strong expertise in data analysis and competence in epidemiology.
• Solid understanding of Infection Prevention and Control in emergency health contexts.
• Genuine interest in and commitment to collaborating with local and national NGOs and government partners in emergency health programs. Experience with IRC’s PEERS approach preferred.
• Effectiveness in bridging conceptual frameworks and practical guidance, ability to turn concepts and strategy into measurable and relevant action.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to facilitate effective collaboration within the organization externally with local partners.
• Ability to work with multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary teams and proven ability to develop positive relationships with global, local and remote team members, while providing and coordinating context-appropriate technical assistance.
• Excellence in organized oral and written communication and excellence in information technology
• Proven ability to deliver results under pressure and in a timely manner.
• Strong track record as a capable trainer able to effectively transfer technical knowledge and skills Demonstrated success in working with donors, partners, project design, and business proposal development.
Language Skills: Fluency in English and French required.
Working Environment: Standard office or remote work environment, 15-20% travel as necessary, including to unstable areas of emergency response work.
Compensation: Posted pay ranges apply to US-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.
Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way – Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Equality, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.
Gender Equality: IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including parental leave, gender-sensitive security protocols and other supportive benefits and allowances
IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
US Benefits: We offer a comprehensive and highly competitive set of benefits. In the US, these include: 10 sick days, 10 US holidays, 20-25 paid time off days (depending on role and tenure), medical insurance starting at $145 per month, dental starting at $7 per month, and vision starting at $5 per month, FSA for healthcare, childcare, and commuter costs, a 403b retirement savings plans with up to 4.5% immediately vested matching contribution, plus a 3-7% base IRC contribution (3 year vesting), disability & life insurance, and an Employee Assistance Program which is available to our staff and their families to support counseling and care in times of crisis and mental health struggles.
More Information
- Job City Senegal
