Health and Nutrition Adviser – HQ

Job Title: Nutrition and Health Adviser

Reports to: Senior Health and HIV Adviser

Liaises with: Country Directors, Senior Managers and Technical Advisers

Job location: The post holder will be based in any HQ office or we can be flexible on base location dependent on the candidate.

Pay Band: €49,905 to €58,711 Band 5

Contract: 24 months

Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organisation committed to the relief, assistance and advancement of poorest people in the least developed countries of the world, aiming towards the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Founded in Ireland in 1968, Concern has over 4,000 personnel working in 24 countries around the world, mostly in Africa and in Asia.

Concern believes in a world where no one lives in fear; where all have access to a decent standard of living, and the opportunities essential to a long, healthy and creative life. Our mission is to help people living in absolute poverty achieve major improvements in their lives, improvements that are sustainable without ongoing support from Concern.

Concern’s Health Policy Aim (2019) is to contribute to a reduction in mortality and morbidity rates and to improve health security for all. The goal of Concern’s Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Strategy 2018-2022 is to achieve significant and lasting improvements in the survival, health and well-being of the extreme poor. Concern’s MNCH strategic objectives are: 1) Supporting Communities to achieve better health outcomes; 2) Develop and implement a concrete approach to Health System Strengthening; and 3) Undertaking an appropriate emergency response, with overarching cross-cutting issues including equality, HIV, human rights-based approaches and quality oversight in all contexts.

Job Purpose: With a rapidly expanding portfolio in the area of health and nutrition, Concern is seeking to expand our team. The nutrition and health adviser’s prime responsibility within the MNCH/Health Systems Support (HSS) Team is to ensure high quality technical support to Concern’s nutrition and health work in emergency, fragile and development contexts, targeting especially extremely poor and vulnerable populations, to develop and document best practices and to promote organisational learning, liaising closely with the Concern Nutrition and WASH teams in the Strategy, Advocacy and Learning (SAL) Unit.

The successful candidate will report to the Senior Health and HIV Adviser on a day-to-day basis, will have strong links with Concern’s offices in New York and London, will be an active member of the nutrition, health (Including Community Management of Acute Malnutrition/CMAM), HIV and HSS technical assistance team which is part of the SAL Unit in Dublin increasingly supporting integrated programming responses in health, education, livelihoods and social protection. Approximately 40% of travel time is anticipated for this position.

Main Duties & Responsibilities:

· Provide guidance and technical support to nutrition and health programmes that prevent under-nutrition, treat malnutrition (i.e. CMAM, CMAM Surge and Health Surge) and improve health service delivery. Guidance and support may be in the form of supporting contextual analysis, proposal development, project design, project implementation and monitoring and evaluation. Both remote and face-to-face technical and administrative support will be required.

· Support fundraising teams in the exploration of health and nutrition funding opportunities and as requested the preparation and submission of concept papers, proposals and budgets.

· Facilitate cross-country learning, synthesis, documentation and sharing of experience / learning of nutrition and health within the organisation.

· Help develop internal organisational nutrition and health training and development of tools/guidelines/standards in line with international best practice to improve programme quality.

· Foster technical capacity building of field staff through technical updates, training opportunities, exchange visits, literature sharing etc.

· Actively engage in nutrition and health networks with key institutions /agencies, universities and donors within the UK, Europe and US as appropriate.

· Strengthen alliances between Concern and other stakeholders involved with nutrition and health programming at international and national levels.

· Document and disseminate experiences and lessons learned on each of the programme areas to ensure Concern’s profile amongst peer organisations is raised at international and national levels.

· Participate in recruitment for technical nutrition and health positions in Concern countries of operation.

· Actively engage with the technical assistance teams based in UK/US/Ireland to support cross- organisational learning and coordination.

· Support nutrition and health related advocacy initiatives as required.

· Provide input into Concern Dublin’s promotional, media and communications materials on nutrition and health.

· Participate as a member of Concern’s Emergency Response, Surge Team, responding to humanitarian emergencies as necessary.

· Contribute to the overall mission of Concern Worldwide and assist other members of the Concern team as requested.

Requirements

· Masters (MSc) in Nutrition/Public Health or related discipline

· At least three to five (3-5) years’ experience working in nutrition and health, especially the broader health systems including service delivery, health workforce, information, supply chain, financing and stewardship particularly in conflict setting or fragile states

· French language competency, oral and written

· Experience in working in Sub-Saharan Africa contexts, urban or rural

· Experience working with scaling up and integrating CMAM and/or other health and nutrition interventions into Ministry of Health (MoH) systems

· Solid understanding and experience implementing strategies to strengthen capabilities and engagement of community institutions to demand and utilize primary health services.

· Excellent inter-personal, communications and facilitation skills

· Familiar with global and regional health and nutrition networks

· Skills in training and mentoring

· Ability to work within multi-cultural teams

· Ability to manage own work

· Flexibility and ability to work under pressure

· Willingness to travel routinely both domestically and international, including on short notice and for extended missions (up to 6 weeks)

Desirable:

· Field experience in the prevention of under-nutrition and a strong understanding of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) framework and 1,000 days campaign

· Field experience in emergency response or post-conflict setting and epidemic response

· Experience with representation at national, regional and global nutrition networks

· Experience in broader health programming; including HIV and AIDS mainstreaming and integration, and health institution and system strengthening for improved service delivery.

· Experience with operational research and peer-review writing

· Experience in integrating cross-cutting issues including equality, gender and human rights

· Currently authorised to work in the Dublin, Ireland