Reporting To Director
Location Dunkeld, Johannesburg
Application Closing Date Open until correct candidate identified
Start Date Immediately
Fixed Term Contract For 7 months

Brief Description of Africa Health Placements
Africa Health Placements (AHP) is a joint venture between the Rural Health Initiative (RHI) and Foundation for Professional Development (Pty) Ltd. AHP offers human resources in health (HRH) solutions to the public sector in southern Africa. Primarily, AHP aims to recruit, orientate and retain healthcare workers and manager. This is achieved through close working relationships with the national Department of Health, provincial health departments, government hospitals, NGO clinics and regulatory bodies, as well as with a number of institutions that support the pipeline of human resources for health. AHP also gathers HRH data and utilises this to influence strategic level decision making to the benefit of public service.

AHP is a social-profit (non-profit) organisation that is a funded through a number of aid organisations, philanthropists and corporate donors, as well as through a growing base of for-profit recruitment activities.
There are severe healthcare staffing shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are exasperated by the well-publicised “brain drain”. Shortages aside, there are huge inequities within the South African healthcare sector. The public sector, serving 80% of the population, only employs a quarter of the country’s doctors. Within the public sector, rural areas are suffering even more dramatically than their urban counterparts.
The Project was started in Mid-2005 and has enjoyed much positive publicity and success since then. AHP is now sought after for the valuable assistance and input for which the organisation is renowned.

Job Description
Background
Africa Health Placements is recruiting a Research Officer to be based in Dunkeld, Johannesburg (head office), with the major and associated responsibilities of managing the process for sourcing and constructing a strategic information database for human resources in health in SA. The incumbent would be expected to produce peer-reviewed journal publications. In addition, the responsibilities of this position include assisting in performing research on the experiences of community service doctors in South Africa. The candidate will be joining an existing team of around 26 full-time staff and contractors based mostly in Johannesburg, Durban, Mbabane, London and the US.

Job Specification – Research Officer
The following is a synopsis of the project framework for the HRH strategic information database:
“The “Human Resources for Health Strategic Information Database” is a 9-month project that would source, analyze, and interpret strategic information on human resources for health (HRH) in South Africa. This project will provide strategic information on the health workforce that could be used to monitor and evaluate the service provision and resource generation functions of the health system in South Africa. The aim is to develop and populate a user-friendly web-based strategic HRH information tool for public use. Available HRH data from multiple sources will be collated, analyzed and interpreted using various statistical techniques, including triangulation methodology, to generate the required information for populating a HRH web-tool for South Africa that could be routinely updated based on data availability, relevance and quality. The strategic HRH information that will be generated will be used to describe and monitor the socio-demographic characteristics of the health workforce in South Africa, as well as provide evidence to sensitize political and social stakeholders about the importance of addressing health workforce issues in health systems planning.”

Main Responsibilities
HRH Strategic Information Database: Revise (if necessary) and Implement the project framework. Coordinate the process of data collection – a process require creativity, lateral thinking and negotiation with senior health care authorities and companies in South Africa. Manage the construction of and population of the database. Coordinate the process of interpreting the information and presenting it for public use. Work with developers to create a public web tool through which such information can be accessed. Create mechanisms to keep the data up-to-date.

CSO Research: Work with AHP’s Strategic Information officer to conduct research and evaluation into the experience of Community Service Officers’ experience during their CSO year. Assist in drafting the research report based on findings of research. Write a peer-reviewed article on the findings of the study for publication. Work with research partners and AHP’s Strategic Information Officer around this task.

Ad Hoc research projects
Key Requirements and Competencies

• Ability to work alone, extremely self-motivated, assertive and results driven - yet patient.
• Excellent written English skills – NB.
• Ability to develop and carry out work plans and solve problems independently.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate communication between professionals with a variety of cultural backgrounds in a respectful and diplomatic manner.
• Forward-thinker, planner and problem-solver.
• Highly computer literate.

Job Specification – Research Officer

• Attention to detail.
• Proven track record of professionalism, strong values and integrity.
• Leadership qualities and team player.
• Driver’s license and own transport.
• A heart for health care!

Required Experience

• Experience in leading research, data collection and analysis processes.
• Experience with complex, multi-faceted projects is desirable.
• Experience in conducting research, drafting research reports, publishing peer-reviewed articles and presenting research findings at symposia.
• Preferably experience in database construction.
• Experience working with government & in policy formulation would be highly regarded.

Required Education
Tertiary education – PhD or completing a PhD, preferably in a health related field. Certain Master-level candidates will also be accepted.

Contact Details
Interested candidates should e-mail a copy of their CV to: saulk@ahp.org.za
and include contact details and the best times to be contacted.

Accredited by the University of the Western Cape (60 credits) Course duration: 30 August 2010 – 21 May 2011

We are glad to announce the sixth Blended Learning Course on "Teaching and the AIDS Pandemic" offered by InWEnt gGmbH and the University of the Western Cape.

This further training offer is part of the InWEnt programme on "Appropriate Strategies to prevent and fight HIV&AIDS (2009 -2012) funded by the Federal German Ministry for Economic cooperation and Development and offering a wide range of HIV&AIDS related capacity building approaches in the health, education and the economy sector in the sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world.

"Teaching and the AIDS Pandemic" is a regional capacity building programme specifically designed for teacher educators and experts in curriculum development in Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia and South Africa with a main eLearning component. It builds on InWEnt/UWC experiences with five blended learning courses and related training and network building activities for more than 100 teacher educators and curriculum experts in the region. The current blended learning course was revised and offers now an accreditation of a total of 60 credits at the level of NQF 7 (4th year B Ed or Honours level) by the University of the Western, South Africa.

The course is planned to start on August 30th, 2010. Application requirements and forms can be requested at: AIDScourse@uwc.ac.za. Applications are due to April 30th, 2010. Please find more information in the attached course announcement.

We kindly invite you to forward the course announcement to principals and interested tutors of further teacher training colleges as well as to experts in curriculum development. The institutions should dispose of a set of PCs for the participants and a broadband internet connection, accessible to tutors and experts without time restrictions. In order to facilitate the transfer and the implementation process we support the participation of small groups of colleagues from one institution.

With a maximum of 25 participants, we will be able to select the following numbers of candidates per country for the up-coming course:
Malawi, Tanzania : 8 participants each
Kenya, Namibia, South Africa: 2- 3 participants each

If you would like to get an idea on the eLearning approach of the training course please feel free to have a look at our demo version:
http://gc21.inwent.org/ibt/GC21/area=gc21/main/en/site/gc21/ibt/teaching_aids.html

We are looking forward to hearing from you,

Application Deadline: April 30 st , 2010
Request application from: aidscourse@uwc.ac.za

Download the full coourse announcement attached below

Stellenbosch University (South Africa) in conjunction with the University of Toronto (Canada) is hosting an International Interprofessional Wound Care Course (IIWCC) in South Africa.

The goal of the course is: To train persons from any professional discipline who are delivering wound care in practice, to provide scientific grounding in the elements of wound healing science, establish interdisciplinary wound healing provision as a field of speciality and to translate new knowledge into practice.

The 12 month course combines 2 residential weekends with online self-study modules and a course selective.

The first residential weekend is February 4-7, 2010 at the Stellenbosch University/Tygerberg Campus near Cape Town, South Africa

Health professionals working in wound care should fill out the application form on the course website: www.sun.ac.za/woundcare

Registration closes on January 15, 2010.

There will be a limited number of bursaries supporting course fees and travel for African students. Bursary selection will be made on the following criteria: 1) clinical experience in wound care; 2) ability to come as interprofessional team (doctor, nurse, rehab); 3) country representation; 4) commitment to introduce interprofessional model in practice; 5) commitment to national wound care leadership.

This course is an important step towards development of continent-wide evidence-informed interprofessional wound care.

Regards,
Brian Ostrow MD, FRCSC
Co-editor,
Surgery in Africa Monthly Review
brian@bookshelf.ca   

http://www.ptolemy.ca/members

HIFA2015 profile: Brian Ostrow works with the Office of International Surgery, University of Toronto, Canada. His interests include the Ptolemy Project http://www.ptolemy.ca which provides Surgeons in the Developing World with online access to the University of Toronto library; and Surgery in Africa http://www.utoronto.ca/ois/SIA.htm which publishes reviews on the topic.