WHO: Technical Lead, Child Development

The department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing (MCA) supports a world where by 2030, every woman, newborn, child, adolescent, and aging person in every setting realizes their rights to physical and mental health and well-being. This will be achieved by supporting WHO's General Programme of Work and universal health coverage for all. The department provides support to countries with a focus on those with a high burden of ill health, to ensure evidence-based policies and strategies are in place to achieve universal access to high quality health services for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and ageing (MNCAH&A), and increase coverage and quality of effective MNCAH&A interventions among pregnant women, newborns, children, adolescents, young adults and older people, and to create mechanisms to measure the impact of those strategies. This includes the identification of global research priorities for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and wellbeing, resource mobilisation, design, and coordination of clinical and implementation public health research in areas where critical gaps exist in the global research portfolio.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

• Provides technical advice on national policies and strategies for implementation in collaboration with national authorities and supports the integration of evidence-based interventions in multi-sectoral early childhood development and/or health sector plans, and in national MNCAH strategies where applicable.
• Develops evidence-based practice tools to strengthen capacities of the health workforce to support nurturing care for child development, by designing standards, competencies, learning materials and on-the-job or self-learning materials including for use in pre-service training and continued education.
• Develops evidence-based approaches and tools to establish a continuum of well care contacts for children 0- 9 years of age and their caregivers, within health and school health services.
• Conceptualizes and develops managerial and monitoring tools, contributes to costing and cost-effectiveness analysis for the area of work.
• Coordinates the strengthening of capacities for planning, implementation, and monitoring of the respective area of work in countries, through WHO's Regional and Country Office programmes and in collaboration with partners.
• Contributes to the continuum of nurturing care for the first two decades of life, develops new evidence based approaches and tools to establish a continuum, of well care contacts, and supports governments in transforming systems and services to support healthy growth, development, and wellbeing of children in the first decade of life.
• Advises on knowledge gaps, research priorities, and contributes to the design of research projects to assess feasibility, acceptability, affordability, and effectiveness of programming for improving childhood development.
• Commissions systematic reviews and synthesizes evidence to inform guidelines, policies, and strategies relevant to Regional and Country Office programmes in the respective area of work.
• Oversees the global research agenda and supports the integration of early childhood development impact measures in ongoing research activities coordinated by the MCA department.
• Leads efforts for the development of knowledge products; dissemination of knowledge products and knowledge exchange; and facilitation of global working groups, working collaboratively with partners and building on existing networks and platforms. Coordinates with different sectors, including nutrition, education, environmental health, violence prevention, child protection, and social welfare, and with multi-sectoral coordination at global, regional, and country levels.
• Builds technical partnerships with other UN Agencies, donors, research institutions and other stakeholders and advocates for inclusion of the technical area of work and its implementation within organizational policies.
• Develops proposals and mobilizes resources to advance the technical knowledge base globally and accelerate implementation in countries.
• Represents the programme area of work in global fora and capacity building activities and serves as the senior technical focal point among UN Agencies and the peer community on public health programming for early childhood development.
• Performs all other related duties as assigned.