Community Health Worker Coordinator Intern (international), Beirut, Lebanon, H&N Section, 3 Months

Contract

This is a Internship contract. It usually requires 0 years of experience, depending on education. More about Internship contracts.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, Health!

Objectives

- To coordinate and document findings on various form of community health and social workers exist in Lebanon

- To support with innovative solutions to MOPH digital team to develop for apps as well as monitoring and CHWs continuous learning systems for Lebanon

Background:

At present Lebanon is enduring a political gridlock after multiple failed attempts to break the year-long government formation impasse, as well as a severe and prolonged economic depression with inflation reaching triple digit and poverty rising sharply . The country has faced serious challenges following the aftermath of the financial crisis, the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive Beirut port explosion in August 2020.The country also faces refugee hosting crisis after the onset of the Syrian war in 2011. Lebanon also hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world. The real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is estimated to have declined by 20.3% in 2020 and continues to contract further in 2021. While Lebanon has made significant progress is survive agenda and the prevention of communicable diseases in last decades, the recent protracted crisis, has slowed down or in some cases reversed back the achievements made, while the thrive and child development is still an unfinished agenda in Lebanon.

The Under-5 mortality and the Neonatal Mortality Rates has decreased from 32 and 21 in 1990 to 7 and 4 in 2020, hence Lebanon’s rate is well below the regional average in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) . Regarding immunization, according to Mansour et al. (2021)2, there is a 31% decline in immunization coverage at the national level with a utilization decline of 46.9% in the private sector for the same services. The multi-layered crisis in Lebanon has also compromised the maternal, infant, and young child and adolescents feeding and nutrition. The findings of the National Nutrition Survey 2021 confirmed that stunting is still an unfinished agenda in several pockets and among the refugee populations. The prevalence of moderate and severe stunting stands at 25% among Syrian refugees in settlements. The prevalence of acute malnutrition is as high as 4% among children and 9% among Pregnant and Lactating Women in Palestinian camps. Moreover, over 40% of women and children are affected by a degree of anaemia which imposes lifelong irreversible impacts on wellbeing and cognitive capital of generations.

After decades of civil war in Lebanon, economic reforms led to a hybrid health-care system in which half of the population had some form of insurance coverage. But the strain on rural primary health care gradually worsened with the growing refugee influx. By early-2021, the contractions of the health workforce resulted in increased demand and concentration of services in relatively better resourced urban centres and private institutions. This situation further exacerbated shortages in semi-urban and rural areas, and in publicly funded health-care facilities . Regarding community health workers (CHWs) in Lebanon, there’s no harmonized program, the CHWs system is not formal and not institutionally connected to PHC system, hence often it’s perceived as volunteerism and the CHW programs are more implemented as fragmented and project-based initiatives. This’s while CHWs can be uniquely utilized to support communities to address their own health needs, as well as motivating community participation and ownership, and accountability. The role of CHWs in linking communities and formal health services is central to effectiveness, and indeed the bridging activities of CHWs between communities and health services in the form of referral and feedback links can provide increased opportunities for the successful preventative and curative services, as well as a mechanism for establishing the community as contributors and owners of local health initiatives. Successful programs are also dependent on PHC health staff creating a supportive environment for CHWs. Many health staff have not received background or training on how to develop constructive relationships with CHWs and are generally not engaged in the planning, implementation, or monitoring of CHW programs. This can also lead to poor attitudes towards CHWs by health staff. A successful formal CHW program is connected to and supported and supervised by the PHCs, accountability lines are clear, it creates credibility, legitimacy, and assurance for CHWs being part of the PHC system and the community they serve and ensures sufficient remuneration for CHWs livelihood.

In Lebanon context, the health sector needs to expand or formalize a harmonized Community Health Worker Program to utilize this capacity as an effective strategy for prevention and promotional health. Hence, UNICEF is planning to support MOPH by developing an operationalization toolkit to systematically expand a harmonized and formal Community Health workers Program.

How can you make a difference?

. To establish and sustain an institutionalized CHWs network program, long term investment and planning at technical, financial, and human resource levels is required, this assignment will be an essential step to involve and learnt as well as coordinate milestone and first phase to equip the MOPH and PHCs partners with the qualifications, tools, technical capacity building and minimum package to ensure effective, feasible and harmonized Community Health Work in Lebanon.

This work will be conducted through below major steps:

- Working with Consulting firm, UNICEF and MoPH, Coordinate and assist in Landscaping the existing CHW models in the country and documenting the lessons learned, strengthens, weaknesses, sustainability measures and providing policy recommendations for replicable models.

- Assist in MOPH and local government to come up with digital solutions for CHW delivery system.

The intern role that is seeking to fill is much more on supporting role. Intern will not be supporting the team in developing concept note or designing apps with needed literature or desk analysis of data etc.

Deliverables and Schedules

In partnership with UNICEF, MOPH, Consulting American University of Beirut,

The intern will assist in

- Developing landscape analysis of the CHW models in the country and documenting the lessons learned

- Coordinate with UNICEF internal sections to solicit technical inputs for standardized minimum packages of services and needed guidelines

- Developing in CHWs app.

Administrative issues

• Supervisor: Chief of Health

• The Intern will provide her/himself with a laptop.

• UNICEF will provide a temporary desk and access to Internet and printing facilities at the UNICEF offices.

• Successful candidates are expected to arrange for the visa requirements, if and when required.

• UNICEF Lebanon may assist with the visa procedures; however, all visa related costs must be borne by the Intern.

• The selected intern will be required to share proof of health/medical insurance prior to contract issuance. Health/Medical Insurance costs will be borne by the intern.

• UNICEF Lebanon will provide the selected intern Malicious Acts Insurance Coverage for service-incurred injuries and malicious acts as per the Appendix D of UN Staff Rules

• Intern will not be visiting any location beyond Beirut. Intern will be stationed in Beirut and in case needed, to visit location, it will be within the Beirut.

• During the intern's visits to community health clinics in Beirut, they will be accompanied by UNICEF staff/interpreters, and a driver trained in security measures will transport them to the site using a UN vehicle.

Timing

The duration of the assignment is 3 months on a full-time basis.

The successful candidate can arrange their working days flexibly, depending on the work plan they jointly prepare with the section team.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Enrolled in a degree programme in an undergraduate or graduate school in one of the following fields: Medicine, Public Health or Community Health or Social Health. Or have graduated from undergraduate or graduate institute within the past 2 years
• Excellent academic performance as demonstrated by recent university or institution records.
• Excellent written communication skills.
• Good knowledge of MS Office and computer skills (MS applications, especially Word, Publisher and Excel).
• Strong command of English is required. Knowledge of Arabic and/or French is considered an asset.
• A high level of individual responsibility, commitment, and initiative.
• Demonstrates openness in sharing information and keeping people informed.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are...

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others.

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements. UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.