Technical Advisor, State Collaborative Surveillance Coordination at Resolve to Save Lives

Position Purpose

• The Technical Advisor (TA), State Collaborative Surveillance Coordination, provides technical and operational support and coordination for the implementation of the subnational component of the Nigeria Collaborative Surveillance initiative, ensuring effective delivery, quality, and alignment with agreed national and organizational priorities. The TA coordinates RTSL support to AFENET, NCDC and participating states; ensures coherent translation of national Collaborative Surveillance approaches into state and LGA implementation; supports 7-1-7 implementation; and maintains alignment across technical delivery, performance management, financing, learning, and capacity transfer.
• The position serves as RTSL’s technical and coordination focal point for subnational Collaborative Surveillance, working with government institutions and implementing partners to establish effective delivery arrangements, resolve implementation bottlenecks, assure the quality of technical assistance, document learning, and progressively transfer knowledge and responsibility to AFENET and participating government institutions.
• The TA provides technical leadership for strengthening the quality and use of subnational outbreak data. This includes coordinating the development and implementation of a data-quality improvement plan for SITAware, in collaboration with NCDC and participating States; providing technical guidance on Early Action Reviews and follow-up of 7-1-7 action items; and developing and applying quality standards, accountability mechanisms, and capacity-building approaches that enable state surveillance teams to produce timely, high-quality 7-1-7 synthesis and epidemic intelligence reports. The Advisor ensures these insights inform performance management, strategic decision-making, and targeted health-security interventions.

The position reports to the Senior Technical Advisor, Health Security and Event-based Surveillance and collaborates closely with AFENET, state surveillance and emergency management teams, state primary healthcare institutions, state-based development partners, NCDC, and RTSL Nigeria and global teams.

Work Location: This position is open to candidates based in Abuja, Nigeria

Duration: Full-time employment for a fixed term of 24 months with the possibility of renewal based on funding and mutual interest.

Core Responsibilities

Technical coordination and programme implementation

• Lead the technical coordination, start-up, implementation, and adaptation of subnational Collaborative Surveillance activities in participating states. Coordinate state-entry, inception, co-creation and alignment processes, and facilitate agreement on governance arrangements, institutional roles, responsibilities, and delivery mechanisms.
• Serve as the principal coordination link for state Collaborative Surveillance implementation. Ensure strong alignment and complementarity across implementing organizations, including RTSL, NCDC, AFENET, State Ministries of Health, State Primary Health Care Development Boards, state public health institutions, PHEOCs, laboratories, and other relevant actors.
• Coordinate the development and periodic review of state-specific implementation plans, ensuring alignment with the national Collaborative Surveillance workplan, State Action Plans for Health Security and other relevant state plans.
• Maintain an integrated view of implementation progress, dependencies, risks, and bottlenecks, and facilitate timely escalation, problem-solving, and corrective action.
• Support states to optimise available financing, including BHCPF, World Bank and partner funding, by aligning resources with priority health-security activities and reducing duplication.

Technical accompaniment and quality assurance

• Provide or coordinate technical assistance to strengthen state leadership, surveillance governance, multisectoral coordination, and the routine use of data for public health action.
• Guide the adaptation of national Collaborative Surveillance tools and approaches to state and LGA contexts while maintaining alignment with NCDC standards and guidance.
• Promote stronger linkages among surveillance, laboratory, primary healthcare, emergency coordination, and response functions.
• Oversee support for institutionalising SITAware as an emergency management platform and 7-1-7 as a routine performance-improvement approach.
• Develop, adapt, and apply quality standards, standard operating procedures, implementation tools, and review mechanisms for subnational delivery, in alignment with national guidance and agreed program requirements.
• Lead the design, coordination, and cofacilitation of workshops and design sprints that convene stakeholders to achieve clearly defined objectives.

Partnership management and capacity transfer

• Coordinate RTSL’s structured technical accompaniment of AFENET for subnational Collaborative Surveillance implementation, monitor progress against agreed project deliverables and reporting requirements, identify implementation gaps, and facilitate timely corrective action.
• Jointly assess AFENET’s technical and institutional capacity and develop a practical capacity-transfer and institutionalisation plan with clear milestones.
• Coach and mentor AFENET state technical and programme personnel through joint planning, delivery, review and problem-solving.
• Progressively transfer responsibility for stakeholder coordination, technical delivery, quality assurance and performance monitoring as agreed readiness milestones are achieved.
• Facilitate regular implementation and performance reviews with AFENET, NCDC and participating states.
• Assess and document AFENET’s readiness to replicate the delivery model in additional states with reduced RTSL accompaniment.

Performance management, monitoring and learning

• Use 7-1-7 to support routine performance review, accountability and course correction.
• Capture and share implementation lessons to contribute to implementation guides, tools, case studies, community of practice, learning briefs, donor reports and other knowledge products that can inform scale-up.
• Support development of a scalable subnational implementation package aligned with national standards and state realities.
• Support NCDC by co-coordinating and co-facilitating the 7-1-7 state Community of Practice and 7-1-7 state office hours.
• Support NCDC to develop a national 7-1-7 synthesis report at least annually
• Support the strengthening of NCDC’s institutional capacity to implement the 7-1-7 approach in collaboration with partners and subnational stakeholders
• Ensure regular SITAware utilisation and performance monitoring in collaboration with the NCDC and RTSL teams

Financing alignment and sustainability

• Support participating states to align Collaborative Surveillance priorities with domestic and partner financing, including the NCDC Gateway of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund.
• Facilitate coordination among technical, planning, budgeting, and finance teams so priority activities are costed, funded, implemented, and monitored.
• Promote the use of surveillance performance evidence to guide prioritisation and resource allocation.
• Support transition and sustainability planning for functions initially financed or technically supported through the grant.

Representation, communication and reporting

• Represent RTSL in relevant subnational Collaborative Surveillance coordination forums, technical working groups and partner engagements, as delegated.
• Represent RTSL as a technical expert on 7-1-7 at subnational and national forums
• Prepare concise technical updates, decision briefs, implementation reports and presentations for RTSL, government, partners and donors.
• Maintain effective communication across national and subnational stakeholders and ensure that decisions, commitments and follow-up actions are documented and tracked.
• Perform other related duties consistent with the purpose of the position, as assigned by RTSL.

Qualifications
Education

• Master’s degree in epidemiology, biostatistics, data science, public health, health informatics or a related field.

Experience

• At least 8 years of progressively responsible experience in public health, disease surveillance, health security, emergency preparedness and response, or health systems strengthening.
• Demonstrated experience and knowledge of the Nigerian health financing system, including the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF)
• Demonstrated experience coordinating complex, multi-partner programmes at national and subnational levels, preferably in a federal or decentralised health system.
• Demonstrated experience working with government institutions, national public health institutes, state health authorities and implementing partners.
• Experience in capacity strengthening, mentorship, institutional development, and transferring implementation responsibility to local or proximal partners.
• Experience in programme planning, implementation monitoring, risk management, quality assurance and adaptive management.
• Experience facilitating multi-stakeholder consultations, co-creation processes, technical working groups and senior leadership reviews.

Skills & Abilities

• Excellent strategic thinking, coordination and programme-management skills, with the ability to translate broad objectives into practical implementation arrangements.
• Strong facilitation, negotiation, diplomacy and relationship-management skills across government, partner and donor stakeholders.
• Ability to analyse complex implementation challenges, identify root causes and drive timely, practical solutions.
• Strong technical understanding of indicator-based and event-based surveillance, epidemic intelligence, outbreak performance improvement and the surveillance-to-response continuum.
• Knowledge of the International Health Regulations (2005), Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response, One Health approaches and relevant health-security assessment and planning frameworks.
• Ability to cultivate and sustain strategic partnerships that strengthen collaboration, alignment and delivery of shared objectives.
• Excellent technical writing, synthesis, presentation and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex issues to non-technical audiences.
• Strong mentoring, coaching and capacity-strengthening skills.
• Ability to work independently while building effective, collaborative teams across institutions and locations.
• Results- and impact-oriented, with sound judgment, attention to detail and a commitment to accountability and learning.
• Ability and willingness to travel frequently within Nigeria, particularly to participating states and, when required, selected LGAs.
• Proficiency with standard office, project management and virtual collaboration tools.
• Fluency in written and spoken English is required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of Nigerian public health institutions and subnational health-security arrangements is highly desirable.
• Experience working with SITAware, SORMAS, 7-1-7, public health emergency operations centres and surveillance information products is desirable