Environmental Health Advisor

ABOUT MSF

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides assistance to populations in distress, victims of natural or man-made disasters, and to victims of armed conflict. They do so irrespective of gender, race, religion, creed, or political convictions.

MSF observes neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical ethics and the right to humanitarian assistance.

MSF-Brazil has an extremely vibrant team of over 220 people, with F2F teams (approx. 120 people) working out of 5 cities. Being one of the 31 MSF offices around the world, bringing together financial and human resources and increasing expertise to support MSF projects in more than 70 countries, with its Brazilian Medical Unit and expectations to further enhance our operational support capacity in the next 2 years. MSF-Brazil’s main office is located in Rio de Janeiro with a growing support office in São Paulo and has its activities funded by more than 500,000 Brazilian donors. In 2019, MSF-Brazil sent 191 Brazilian professionals from various specialties to projects around the world.

BRAMU is an independent medical unit within MSF, funded and accountable to MSF-Brazil’s directorate that is integrated into the OC Brussel medical department while maintaining autonomy for regional initiatives and innovative approaches.

This position will be based in BRAMU. The focus for support will be on the Latin America region and eventually a second region. This position is part of the Operational Center Brussels (OCB) Environmental Health unit team.

OBJECTIVE:

The objective is to provide support to operations while seeking to interlink current MSF field realities, challenges, models, and methods of response and intervention to offer renewed observations and perspectives from a regional perspective that could serve MSF operations to enhance field responses.

We need an expert on environmental health (EH) and arboviruses with practical experience to help field teams face the consequences of environmental degradation and its effects on diseases.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Operational and strategic functions

• Include environmental determinants of health into the programmatic and strategic analysis of MSF interventions and correlate them to the MSF field response, strategic orientations, and operational approaches.

• Define and design the most adapted and relevant practices to respond to the environmental health (EH) needs of populations and patients by applying the socio-ecological lens.

• Monitor arboviruses in the region, and help field teams develop contingency plans to respond to potential outbreaks.

Field support

• Conduct field visits to support assessment, analysis, and implementation of quality environmental health interventions.

• Participate in exploratory missions, emergencies (in an advisory, operational, and support capacity), program support visits, and project committee meetings

• Support EH HR through briefings, training, coaching, on technical and management aspects

• Collaborate with the medical teams in the concerned operational unit and relevant medical department referents to provide strategic direction to the field.

• Coordinate or carry out needs assessments and give expert advice regarding program set-up.

• Support field innovation, capitalization, and sharing with the Environmental Health unit.

• Support advocacy strategies both at the field level at international levels; through data analysis, problem or needs identification, and technical advice in terms of the proposed solutions.

• Recommend transversal integrated environmental health strategies in every project, when relevant.

Data, information, and training

• Contribute to the development and update of EH indicators (EHI) and data collection tools for EHI to help professionals who are not experts in the subject to accurately monitor the phenomena of environmental Health in target populations.

• Produce and adapt analysis in close collaboration with/for MSF operations in the field, cells, and departments to bring observations, ideas, reflections, and analysis to improve and advise MSF interventions and positioning

• Participate in the development/revision of policies, guidelines, protocols, tools, and other strategic papers in the field of environmental health.

• Identify major gaps in environmental health approaches or perception in MSF and recommend strategies to address these.

• Produce training in collaboration with medical departments and external experts on main regional arbovirus outbreaks.

• Link regional problems and events to global trends and bring different experiences to similar problems from other continents.

• Develop in partnership with other MSF colleagues an intra-organizational training on Environmental Health, aiming to raise awareness and increase knowledge of the environmental determinants of health.

Field research and advocacy

• Conduct intervention research to generate knowledge, theory, and practices that aim to influence risk factors to direct environmental health effects.

• To reflect on new tools and surveys that could help and allow to monitor and documenting events and social determinants of environmental health in the contexts where MSF intervenes and in field missions

• Contribute to the development of operational field research in collaboration with advocacy, and analysis unitS, operational departments, and external partners.

Partnerships and communities of practice

• Collaborate and work closely with MSF EH, water and sanitation, entomologists, planetary health, nutrition, outbreak referents, movement-wide

• Collaborate with other referents in medical departments and operations on subjects of common interest: one health, planetary health, and environmental footprint.

• Build a relevant network of experts in planetary and environmental health, as much as on emerging diseases.

• Develop partnerships and collaboration with external communities of practice in the academy, external organizations, and research institutes.

EDUCATION:

• Degree in a relevant field

• Studies in Ecology is an asset

• Master’s Degree or Higher (desirable)

EXPERIENCE IN:

• health & environmental interventions

• Qualitative research or action research methodology

• Knowledge and sensitivity towards traditional peoples

• Field experience (recommended)

• MSF experience is an asset

LANGUAGES:

• English spoken and written: proficiency mandatory

• Portuguese or Spanish: spoken mandatory

KEY SKILLS:

• Programmatic thinking is a must

• Ability to produce reports and protocols

• Coaching attitude and skills

BASIC COMPETENCIES:

• Commitment to MSF Principles

• Strategic Vision

• Results and Quality Orientation

• Teamwork and Cooperation