Call for Applications: African Public Health Emergency Management Fellowship

Call for Applications: African Public Health Emergency Management Fellowship Combating the numerous threats to public health across the African continent requires an adequately trained and equipped workforce.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) called for a new public health arrangement that includes workforce development, properly aligned with the vision of the African Union (AU) and its desire to build capacity in public health in the medium and long term . -term training in identified areas of need.
The initiation of Africa CDC’s Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) grant will address the critical need for skilled human resources to lead and manage emergency management programs that include early detection and response to emergencies as they arise.

Objective: Develop a highly qualified African public health workforce to coordinate and lead public health emergency preparedness and response in Africa.
• Provide fellows with up-to-date knowledge of public health emergency management and Public Health Emergency Operations Centers (PHEOCs)
• Provide colleagues with in-depth exposure to PHEOCs role in preparing for and responding to various public health emergencies
• Skill development of fellows to manage PHEOC’s various functions and lead public health emergency response
• Establishing a sustainable program for PHEM on the African continent

A. Principles of Community Planning
The design of the fellowship takes into account the emergent nature of public health emergencies on the continent and collective risks in the world, which can cause major disruptions with even community-wide impacts.

Resilience of Fellowship: Fellowship curriculum designed to ensure that fellows can be deployed at any point in the fellowship in the event of a major public health event. Fellowship faculty will continually explore opportunities to expand funding streams with institutional funding.
Industry Expert: Curriculum designed to meet the most complex emergency situations and delivered by experienced training faculty. Fellows authorized to serve at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
Scalable and adaptable model: As a sustainability strategy, an accountability framework is created to ensure continued expansion and guarantee that progress and experiences can be easily replicated at regional, national and sub-national levels.
Leverage existing systems: The objectives of the fellowship are embedded in the broader objective of CDC Africa’s workforce development strategy as part of the New Public Health Agenda for CDC Africa, driven by the desire to meet the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
Continuous Improvement: The fellowship will realistically evolve into an institutional flagship program that establishes monitoring and evaluation processes that link accountability mechanisms and operational decisions with feedback from participants, AU Member States and technical partners.

B. Fellowship Description
Overview

The PHEM Fellowship will be open to a mid-career African public health professional with experience in PHEOC management or leading emergency preparedness and response programs originating from African Union member states. Fellows will be received through a standardized training, mentoring, hands-on experience, and technical assistance program that will leverage the design of the US-CDC PHEM Fellowship. During the training, fellows will receive specialized training in emergency functions for public health and
companies, participate in study tours, work within the Africa CDC EOC, participate in public health exercises and respond to and receive guidance from global emergency management experts. Upon completion and return to home countries, fellows are expected to facilitate the expansion of public health preparedness programs in their home countries and assume leadership and advisory roles in public health preparedness programs.

Fellowship structure
The PHEM scholarship lasts for 24 weeks (six months). It will include eight weeks of in-person training at the Africa CDC headquarters in Ethiopia. During this time, Fellows will be equally paired with experienced mentors and coaches to support their ongoing learning experience. Fellows will then deploy to PHEOCs across Africa, including the Africa CDC PHEOC for eight weeks. The next four weeks will be spent on educational trips where each fellow will have the opportunity to visit one PHEOC in Africa and one outside of Africa.
To complete the program, the last four weeks will be spent on didactic learning, project completion and the final exam.