The Health Program is central to delivering our mission to save wildlife and wild places around the globe. Wildlife, livestock, and human diseases will likely have a significant impact on the future development of sustainable land uses, protected areas, transboundary natural resource management, other biodiversity conservation approaches, and livelihood opportunities in many of the landscapes and seascapes where we work. Our work at the interface of wildlife, domestic animal, and human health has demonstrated that a One Health approach can build new constituencies for conservation and strengthen existing ones, while mitigating a key threat to conservation.

The Wildlife Data Specialist, Health Research is integral to the success of the WCS Health Database, Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) for Health, their integration, and their implementation and use around the world. 50% of this position is to lead in further developing the WCS Health Database and SMART for Health in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and East Africa in the near term and rollout to other regions of the world in the longer term. 40% of this position will focus on data analysis related to wildlife disease surveillance and zoonotic disease threats, including research. The remaining 10% is to serve as a coordinator for the health programs in Latin America. This position should understand the importance of database design, management, and integrity in terms of both efficiency and security.

The Wildlife Data Specialist, Health Research will be part of the Health Program team and as such will be involved in other projects as needed. This position will work very closely with the SMART team at WCS. While supporting WildHealthNet data needs globally, this position will work in coordination with Country Programs and Health staff implementing equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Major Responsibilities:

Data Management – WCS Health Database

•  Work with WCS Conservation Technology and other organizations as needed to design and develop the WCS Health Database that meets WCS Health Program requirements.
•  Receive issues from field teams, troubleshoot and work with WCS Conservation Technology to resolve any issues that require their support.
•  Develop tools to conduct data quality assessments and periodically perform data quality checks.
•  Conduct training, reviews, and updates with the field teams in countries where the WCS Wildlife Health Database is in use (with plans to expand).
•  Maintain the Database for WCS users and potentially external users, including creation of accounts for all users and assignment of security levels, updating of drop-down menus, creation of projects, bulk data uploads etc.
•  Keep updated versions of database user manuals and training guides.
•  Report on implementation progress as needed.
•  Monitor and support SMART-Database integration, resolving any issues with the integration.

Data management – SMART

•  Work with WCS Conservation Technology team and members of the broader SMART Partnership to update SMART for Health as needed, to ensure staff and partners are informed about updates to the SMART technology, and ensure data and systems are kept up to data nationally and centrally.
•  Work closely with Conservation Technology team and broader SMART Partnership team to deliver training as part of the roll out and ongoing support of SMART for Health to field teams.
•  Fully rollout SMART for Health in Laos, Cambodia, Peru, and other Latin American countries and support implementation efforts in other countries.
•  Monitor Alerts and perform regular analysis and review of SMART for Health data across all locations where the WCS Health Program retains access to data to identify where support may be needed.
•  Work individually with country programs to identify ways forward in integration of health components in the existing SMART patrol data model in use in each conservation area (+ link with SMART for Health).
•  Manage SMART Connect server infrastructure.
•  Develop SMART Reports for both national and central use cases, dashboards, and R script to generate other reports.
•  Improve and further develop training material and maintaining training/demo database and keep an updated version of the SMART for Health user manual and training guides.
•  Troubleshoot and document technology/system issues and provide support when possible.
•  Suggest, document, and make continual improvements to SMART and SMART for Health systems.
•  Report on implementation progress as needed.
•  Maintain access and security of SMART for Health systems.

Data Analysis

•  Use data analysis tools to visualize data and monitor trends in wildlife health across different databases.
•  Support field teams and program leadership in data cleaning, visualization, and analysis following best practice of reproducibility, versioning, and collaborative code development, and build capacity in this area within both field teams and government partners.
•  Provide support to WildHealthNet partners regarding data analysis and generate management-relevant information from field data.
•  Contribute to developing and maintaining tools facilitating report automation (in particular using Rmarkdown/Quarto and Shiny) and use these tools to highlight the value of the surveillance systems to our government partners.
•  Promote access to Wildlife Health data and systems while ensuring data and systems are secured with appropriate access controls.
•  Develop research and high-quality science that support the Health Program
•  Help produce and write high quality peer-reviewed publications and reports.

Coordinating role with the health programs in Latin America

•  Strengthen and nurture effective working relationships and synergies with WCS’ Latin America.
•  Ensure alignment to WCS Health’s strategic framework of programs and projects undertaken in the region, including the provision of guidance.