Consultant - Surveillance Data Standards Development

• First level University Degree in Public Health, Epidemiology, or a related field.

Desirable:

• Advanced degree in data management, data science or related field.

Experience:
Essential:

• 5 to 10 years of relevant professional experience in epidemiology, public health surveillance, or any related field.
• Experience in conducting indicator-based surveillance.
• Proven experience in conducting systematic reviews.

Desirable:

• Experience in setting up surveillance systems.
• Experience with UN or other international or multinational organizations.

Skills: 

• Knowledge of disease surveillance guidelines, protocols, and standards.
• Knowledge of public health surveillance systems and tools.
• Solid analytical skills with demonstrated ability to rapidly gather and consolidate information from multiple sources.
• Excellent writing skills and ability to produce documentation to a high standard.
• Ability to effectively collaborate with teams in an international, multicultural, multi-disciplinary environment working under different time-zones.
• Highly organized approach to activities; executes thoroughly under time pressure.
• Proactive, flexible, resourceful, and able to work independently.
• Proficiency in MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.).
• Proficiency in MS SharePoint, MS Visio, MS Project.

Languages required:
Essential:  

• Expert knowledge of English.

Desirable:

• Intermediate knowledge of French and/or Spanish.

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to travel.

• First level University Degree in Public Health, Epidemiology, or a related field.

Desirable:

• Advanced degree in data management, data science or related field.

Experience:
Essential:

• 5 to 10 years of relevant professional experience in epidemiology, public health surveillance, or any related field.
• Experience in conducting indicator-based surveillance.
• Proven experience in conducting systematic reviews.

Desirable:

• Experience in setting up surveillance systems.
• Experience with UN or other international or multinational organizations.

Skills: 

• Knowledge of disease surveillance guidelines, protocols, and standards.
• Knowledge of public health surveillance systems and tools.
• Solid analytical skills with demonstrated ability to rapidly gather and consolidate information from multiple sources.
• Excellent writing skills and ability to produce documentation to a high standard.
• Ability to effectively collaborate with teams in an international, multicultural, multi-disciplinary environment working under different time-zones.
• Highly organized approach to activities; executes thoroughly under time pressure.
• Proactive, flexible, resourceful, and able to work independently.
• Proficiency in MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.).
• Proficiency in MS SharePoint, MS Visio, MS Project.

Languages required:
Essential:  

• Expert knowledge of English.

Desirable:

• Intermediate knowledge of French and/or Spanish.

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to travel.

Purpose of consultancy

• To contribute to the development of global surveillance standards for data collection and sharing with a focus on digitalization.

Background

• Surveillance systems in public health serve a wide array of objectives, encompassing disease monitoring, early detection, contact tracing, and epidemiological assessment.
• This versatility together with other factors has contributed to lack of data integration and harmonization at country, regional, and global levels and poses challenges such as duplicated data collection efforts, parallel reporting, inconsistencies and lack of data quality and detail.
• Underlying these issues is the absence of standardized terminologies and standards that could integrate or harmonize surveillance systems.
• Within the strategy of Collaborative Surveillance, the WHO Surveillance Systems Department (WSE/SRV) aims to develop a comprehensive suite of norms and standards for public health surveillance.
• Our objective is to enhance quality, timeliness, granularity of surveillance systems on one hand and collaboration, interoperability, and synergy between them on the other hand, to generate better insights for better public health decision-making.

Deliverables

• Deliverable 1: A comprehensive report outlining the commonalities, differences, and gaps within and across 5 selected disease surveillance guidelines.
• Expected by: July 2024
• Deliverables 2: Report detailing the adoption and representation of WHO surveillance data standards across commonly used systems and tools for the 5 selected diseases.
• Expected by: August 2024
• Deliverables 3: Documentation of key surveillance components to be standardized and/or adapted for digitalization based on the SMART guidelines approach.
• Expected by: September 2024
• Deliverables 4: Development of technical reports, digital adaptation kits and scientific manuscripts.
• Expected by: December 2024