Health Promotion Officer

The Opportunity:

Under the supervision of the Integrated Vector Control Manager, and in close coordination with the Chief of Party and relevant technical leads, the Health Promotion Officer leads the planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring, and documentation of information, education and communication activities, community engagement, and health promotion activities. The Health Promotion Officer works with government counterparts, local authorities, community leaders, civil society organizations, media partners, service providers, and project teams to build awareness, trust, acceptance, and sustain demand and participation in malaria vector control, HIV/AIDS service delivery, and other activities. Duration: December 15, 2026-September 30, 2027

The Abt Global Central Mechanism supports malaria vector control and HIV/AIDS service delivery in 14 partner countries, with the goal of improving health outcomes for target populations while strengthening the planning, data management, and implementation capacity of host-country governments and local institutions. The project sustains uninterrupted malaria vector control interventions, including insecticide-treated net (ITN) distribution, indoor residual spraying (IRS), and spatial emanators, as well as HIV prevention, testing, and treatment services. Across partner countries, the project identifies opportunities to align and transition vector control data collection to national Health Management Information System (HMIS)/DHIS2 platforms. It also strengthens HIV laboratory referral and quality management systems and supports entomological and insecticide-resistance surveillance, including monitoring for Anopheles stephensi , in priority countries. In collaboration with government counterparts, the project identifies functions for transition and provides support to advance government memorandum of understanding (MOU) objectives. This project runs for 12 months in Ghana from October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027.

Core Responsibilities

Milestone Responsibilities:

- Develop and maintain an integrated communication and community-engagement readiness plan aligned with approved country milestones, workplans, budgets, intervention calendars, and government priorities.

- Translate activity milestones into detailed communication schedules covering audience analysis, message and material development, approvals, production, dissemination, community mobilization, media engagement, training, and monitoring.

- Participate in country milestone-progress reviews and provide accurate updates on communication readiness, community acceptance, stakeholder engagement, material availability, media placement, training, and field implementation.

- Escalate risks that may affect milestones, including delayed approvals or production, misinformation, community resistance, low participation, access barriers, safeguarding concerns, scope growth, and funding pressures.

- Control changes affecting communication scope, schedule, resources, messages, channels, or budget through documented review and formal authorization.

Communication Strategy and Planning:

- Lead the development, implementation, and regular updating of country’s demand creation, risk communication, community engagement, and health promotion strategies in coordination with project teams and government counterparts.

- Conduct or support audience, stakeholder, channel, and barrier analyses to identify priority groups, trusted messengers, effective communication channels, and appropriate approaches for different settings.

- Prepare costed communication and community-mobilization plans for IRS, ITN distribution, spatial emanators, entomological surveillance, HIV/AIDS services, and other activities applicable to the approved country scope.

- Ensure communication plans are integrated with technical microplans , implementation schedules, logistics plans, training plans, monitoring frameworks, and risk-management measures.

- Coordinate timely technical and government review, pretesting, approval, translation, production, and dissemination of messages and materials.

Community Engagement and Mobilization:

- Plan and coordinate community outreach, sensitization, advocacy, and mobilization activities before, during, and after project interventions.

- Build and maintain effective partnerships with national and subnational government authorities, health workers, civil society organizations, faith and traditional leaders, community-based organizations, youth and women's groups, and other trusted influencers.

- Develop community-mobilization calendars aligned with intervention schedules and ensure that communities receive timely, accurate information on the purpose, benefits, timing, safety, eligibility, procedures, and follow-up requirements of project activities.

- Support dialogue with communities to identify and address concerns, rumors, misinformation, refusal, low participation, inequitable access, and other barriers to adoption or service uptake.

- Promote inclusive and equitable engagement of women, men, adolescents, persons with disabilities, hard-to-reach populations, and other underserved groups.

- Represent the project, as assigned, at coordination meetings, community forums, local steering committees, advocacy events, and relevant technical working groups.

- Frequent travel and extended work hours during campaigns or other intensive implementation periods, as required.

Message, Material, Media, and Brand Management:

- Develop, review, adapt, and pretest audience-appropriate change messages and materials, including job aids, brochures, posters, banners, frequently asked questions, scripts, talking points, digital content, and community discussion guides.

- Coordinate radio, television, print, community, and digital communication activities, including public service announcements, jingles, talk shows, interviews, press briefings, and social media content, as applicable.

- Ensure all public-facing content is technically accurate, culturally and linguistically appropriate, accessible, consistent with approved government guidance, and cleared through required project and client approval processes.

- Maintain compliance with Abt Global and client branding, marking, consent, photography, safeguarding, and external communication requirements.

- Develop media and dissemination plans; maintain productive relationships with media outlets and communication service providers; and monitor delivery against approved schedules, quality standards, and contracts.

- Identify and document human-interest stories, success stories, lessons learned, and good practices in coordination with technical, monitoring, and leadership teams.

Training, Supervision, and Capacity Strengthening:

- Support the identification, recruitment, orientation, training, deployment, supervision, and performance monitoring of community mobilizers, communication teams, volunteers, and temporary personnel, as applicable.

- Develop and deliver practical training, coaching, job aids, and supportive supervision tools for project staff, government counterparts, health workers, local organizations, media partners, community leaders, and mobilization teams.

- Conduct field monitoring and supportive supervision to confirm message quality, interpersonal communication skills, reach, inclusion, adherence to approved approaches, and timely correction of performance gaps.

- Contribute to the country's capacity-strengthening and transition plan by transferring communication planning, implementation, monitoring, documentation, and quality-assurance skills to government and local institutions.

- Contribute to the country’s transition plan.

Monitoring, Learning, and Reporting:

- Work with monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning staff to define communication and community engagement indicators, data sources, targets, reporting tools, and feedback mechanisms.

- Monitor the reach, frequency, quality, audience response, participation, acceptance, and effectiveness of communication and mobilization activities using routine data, field observations, media logs, community feedback, and other approved methods.

- Maintain complete, accurate, and audit-ready records of stakeholder meetings, training, materials, approvals, dissemination, media placements, community activities, supervision, costs, results, and corrective actions.

- Prepare weekly, monthly, campaign, and other required reports and contribute communication results, analysis, lessons, and success stories to workplans, client deliverables, presentations, and after-action reviews.

- Use monitoring findings and community feedback to recommend timely adjustments to messages, channels, targeting, mobilization intensity, training, and implementation approaches.

- Perform other related duties as assigned by the immediate supervisor.

What We Value:

Minimum Qualifications:

- Bachelor's + 5 years, or master's degree + 3 years or PhD + 0 years

- Professional fluency in English is required.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Bachelor’s degree in communications, public health, community health, health promotion, journalism, social sciences, international development, or another relevant field.

- At least 5 years demonstrated experience designing and implementing health promotion, demand creation, risk communication, community engagement, public education, or advocacy activities for international health or development programs.

- Experience supporting malaria vector control, including IRS, ITN distribution, spatial emanators, or related community-based health interventions, is strongly preferred; experience in HIV/AIDS programming is an advantage.

- Experience developing, adapting, pretesting, and disseminating messages and materials through interpersonal, community, mass-media, and digital channels.

- Demonstrated ability to work in close partnership with government stakeholders, local authorities, civil society, media organizations, community leaders, and service providers, with an emphasis on capacity strengthening and skills transfer.

- Experience recruiting, training, supervising and coaching community mobilizers and other field personnel.

- Knowledge of USG funded project communication, branding and marking, safeguarding, informed consent and documentation requirement will be advantage

- Strong planning, facilitation, interpersonal, problem solving, organization, written and writing communication skills.

- Proficiency in MS Suite software experience and digital communication, data-collection, content-development, or media-monitoring tools is an advantage.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree + Five years of relevant experience, or Master’s Degree + Three years of relevant experience, or PhD

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Abt Associates is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer committed to fostering a diverse workforce. Abt Associates provides market-competitive salaries and comprehensive employee benefits. Local candidates strongly encouraged to apply.

Disclaimer: Abt Associates will never ask candidates for money in exchange for an offer of employment.