Senior Technical Advisor: Paediatric & Adolescent Care at Anova Health Institute

Anova is an NGO that empowers people and changes lives. Good health and quality of life is what motivates us to provide healthcare solutions and support for those who need it most.

The successful candidate oversees and manage Anova’s paediatric & adolescent HIV Care & Treatment programme and initiatives in the district; to achieve the 95-95-95 targets. This includes programme implementation and review, senior medical expertise, psychosocial support, quality improvement initiatives and stakeholder management. 

Key Duties and Responsibilities

Programme Management & Technical Assistance

• Oversee implementation of 959595 HIV/TB strategy for children & adolescents (0 – 19 years) across JHB sub-districts according to workplans, including scale-up of high yield strategies to improve case finding, linkage to care and support enhanced adherence to ART and viral suppression for children & adolescents living with HIV.
• Conduct data analysis and review of programme performance against targets/programme outputs. Support sub-district technical teams to develop Quality Improvement plans for poor performance areas.
• Oversee the development and provision of paediatrics/adolescents training to Anova and DoH multidisciplinary staff, and the development of guidelines, policies, and protocols.
• Support the paediatrics/adolescents team with clinical requirements for community-based service delivery.
• Support sub-districts to write up best practice case/reports and participate in relevant research projects in the district accordingly, to keep abreast of issues and add to the pool of knowledge within Anova.

Health System Strengthening & Programme Quality Improvement

• Support Anova paediatrics/adolescent TAs (through mentorship, providing technical advice, conducting joint stakeholder engagement activities, conducting facility level support visits, etc.) to ensure that agreed upon activities are successfully implemented in facilities.
• Identify risks to successful implementation of 959595 activities, address it with relevant teams (e.g., Anova, District management, etc.) and put measures in place to mitigate the risk.
• Facilitate improvement in early infant diagnosis and ART initiation in children across the district. 
• Oversee processes that improve Linkage to care and ART initiation in children including audits on the NHLS RfA reports and Tier.net Pre-ART and ART modules to ensure that HIV positive infants and children are initiated on ART. (in conjunction with Seconded TA)
• Support sub-district teams to monitor and institute improvement interventions for VL completion and suppression.
• Work with sub-district TAs to improve on NAS implementation, including DMOC, PSS and the support and management of OVC’s affected by HIV and Children with unsuppressed viral loads.
• Oversee activities that identify and improve on gaps on all the TB related 3-90s, including IPT initiation & completion and Case Finding strategies.
• Enable implementation of paediatric/adolescent ACC support at identified facilities, through TAs and ACC MOs
• Conduct Paediatric/Adolescent programme quality assessments using evaluation and audit tools, such as file audit tools. Guide sub-district TAs to implement QI activities to demonstrate improvement of poor performing areas.
• Co-ordinate paediatric/adolescent donor and/or Anova management visits together with sub-district managers. Be available for such facility or DoH engagement visits.

Capacity Building

• Coordinate and support sub-district TAs to conduct capacity building across the clusters, and ensure monitoring, reporting and accountability systems are in place, working with District Training team (DoH and Anova)
• Use different data sources to identify training needs and ensure capacity building takes place according to these.
• Provide training & mentorship to relevant staff (internal & external staff) on key issues related to Management of children and Adolescents living with HIV.
• Conduct PMTCT/VTP, NIMART, Basic TB and any other HIV/TB/PMTCT and related trainings that supports the current needs of the department of health as the need arises.

Team Management, Coaching and Supervision

• Provide clinical training and mentorship on specific topics and oversee implementation of such activities by TAs and other clinicians.
• Capacitate Anova staff with relevant skills to conduct paediatric HIV support activities.
• Manage the day-to-day activities of the Paeds and Adolescent TAS and provide mentoring and coaching to paeds and adolescent team.
• Be familiar with Anova HR and recruitment policies and work with HR on recruitment in line with such policies.
• Identify training needs and opportunities for programme staff and arrange for such trainings.
• Ensure that staff performance Contracts linked to the strategic plan of the organisation.
• Execute performance reviews for paeds/adol TAs bi-annually or as directed by HR.

Stakeholder engagement

• Establish, manage, and maintain working relationships with sub-districts, facilities and other partner stakeholders for successful implementation of DOH and Anova workplans
• Attend monthly and adhoc meetings with supported sub-districts, district, and partners.
• Liaise with relevant managers of the Department of Health to ensure maximum buy-in and partnership, including engagement at a sub-district level.
• Work closely with other partners supporting Paeds & Adolescent programmes within the district to share best practices and align activities.
• Support TAs in their sub-district level and facility programme planning, review and other meetings.

Reporting and Other Activities

• Compile ad hoc, monthly, quarterly report to line manager, funders and DOH as required.
• Oversee and compile summary reports from sub-district paediatric/adolescent teams.
• Contribute to work plan development and implementation.
• Provide feedback on programme developments.
• Monthly reporting on meetings attended with sub-district, district, and or other stakeholders.

Essential Qualifications and Experience

• MBChB degree or BCurr with a Postgraduate qualification with Primary Health Care speciality (Nurse Clinician)
• Valid HPCSA registration as Independent Practitioner or valid SANC registration
• Minimum 2 years’ post community service clinical experience (for medical doctors) and 5 years for Nurse Clinicians
• Paediatric and Adolescent HIV/TB Management training and experience essential.
• NIMART trained and graduated from the mentorship programme (Nurse Clinician)
• Quality Improvement and project and team management skills
• Experience in training an advantage.
• Experience in engaging with children and caregivers around Disclosure in children.
• Experience with management of (donor) public health programmes, an advantage
• Knowledge of 959595 strategy and other Health related policies

Technical Knowledge and Skills

• Excellent knowledge of Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART), TB and Chronic Medication in children and adolescents
• Trained on Paediatric management of ART & AYFS
• Experience managing children & adolescent on ART.
• Understanding of TB/HIV/VTP guidelines, programme indicators and monitoring & evaluation
• Ability to analyse and interpret HIV/TB programme data to inform programme planning and implementation.
• Excellent written & verbal communication.
• Ability to work within a multidisciplinary team.