Research Assistants at John Snow Incorporated (JSI) - Oyo and Plateau

John Snow, Inc. is a public health research and consulting firm in the United States and around the world provides technical and managerial assistance to public health programs worldwide. John Snow, Inc. (JSI), and our nonprofit JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., are public health management consulting and research organizations dedicated to improving the health of individuals and communities throughout the world. Our mission is to improve the health of underserved people and communities and to provide a place where people of passion and commitment can pursue this cause. JSI, with its nonprofit partner JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., works in Nigeria to develop innovative health solutions and health system strengthening projects across a wide range of public health program areas.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Research Assistant

Locations: Oyo and Plateau
Timeframe: March 27th - 30th, 2023

DMPA-SC Access Collaborative

• Subcutaneous DMPA Access Collaborative (the Access Collaborative) is a six-year project led by PATH. JSI is a sub-grantee to PATH.
• Subcutaneous depo medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA-SC) is an innovative subcutaneous injectable contraceptive that is currently being introduced in many countries, with a focus on increasing women’s access to safe, effective contraception.
• The Access Collaborative works with country stakeholders and facilitates coordination of DMPA-SC introduction and scale-up planning in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria within the context of strengthening the existing health system.

Background

• Integrated Supportive Supervision (ISS) is a process which encourages the delivery of quality service for optimal outcomes through better communication, team spirit to resolve identified problems, and mentoring to motivate health workers to supervise, monitor and improve their individual and collective performance.
• It improves the knowledge and skills of peripheral health workers in order to ensure the delivery of quality health services through direct contact with health workers for an on-site observation of health delivery processes, reviewing of registers and other documents, immediate orientation of health workers on observed gaps in knowledge and or skills and the provision of documented feedback on issues, challenges and jointly agreed action points.
• ISS involves inspecting, controlling and giving support to health workers, to improve their skills and performance, and ultimately, health service delivery. Supportive supervision plays a critical role to ensure high-performing health workers have the appropriate knowledge, skills, and motivation to deliver quality family planning (FP) services and informed choice counseling.
• In Nigeria, there has poor coordination of the various supportive supervisions happening in various states in the country and with partner support.
• This may have led to a huge multiplicity of efforts and a waste of limited resources by health partners, states ministry of health (MOH) and the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH). To curb this, the Federal Ministry of Health collaborated with health partners to develop comprehensive national ISS tools/checklist to be used at the primary, secondary and tertiary health levels.
• The last version of these tool was updated over 5 years ago and may not include information on new and emerging diseases, new contraceptive methods or other tracer products.  The FMOH is currently leading the revision of the ISS tools and checklist to resolve these challenges.

Context:

• To ensure an effective supportive supervision at all levels that enables health workers to have appropriate knowledge, skills, and motivation to deliver quality MNCH services, the Nigerian government is revising the ISS tools/checklists.
• In order to evaluate the cost, duration and tryout if the proposed instrument will work for actual data collection, it is pertinent to field test the tools. 

Objectives

• The Access Collaborative project is seeking a highly experienced research assistant to support the field testing of the national ISS tools/checklist for family planning services.
• The research assistant will work under the guidance of the FMOH, the SMOH and in partnership with the JSI team.

Key Activities:

• To support field testing of the integrated supportive supervision tools

Deliverables
The key deliverables for the research assistants will be:

• To participate in the pre- testing of the data collection tools/checklist.
• To participate in the field testing of the ISS tools and checklist in Plateau/ Oyo state as assigned
• To interview, collect data on the android driven electronic data collection platform and upload appropriately to the data management hub.
• To support the state lead and function as an integral member of the team
• To carry out any other data collection and field-testing related tasks assigned by the state lead
• To ensure a timely delivery of all materials to the consultant
• To complete and upload information on the reliability test tool, being used to provide feedback on the administration process

Required Skills and Experience

• Communication
• Attention to detail
• Critical thinking
• Technical skills
• Planning and scheduling
• Interviewing
• Data Collection

Remuneration
N25,000 Per day

Mode of Payment:

• Payment will be done after the exercise

Application Closing Date
27th March, 2023.