Number of Interns: 2
Proposed Start Date: August 1, 2021
Proposed End Date: 12 months 
Number of Work Hours per Week: 40

Additional Information: 

The intern’s presence in Ghana is contingent on securing funding for such travel. When the Intern is to be physically present in Ghana, the UHAS School of Public Health shall provide the following support:

Accommodation - The School has a guesthouse which is made available to our external visitors at a subsidized rate of 70 USD per week.

Transportation - The School is able to pick the Intern to and from the airport to Hohoe, where our School is situated. However, the biggest challenge of the school is providing regular transportation for the Intern in situations where field visits, community engagements and other project activities require that the Intern commutes from one locality to the other.

Other living expenses – The Intern together with the host institution will have to make provision for the Intern’s health insurance, day-to-day transportation, accommodation, feeding, and other costs associated with daily living.

How to Apply:

Please complete the following application form. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview.

The University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) was established by an Act of Parliament (Act 828) in December 2011 in the Volta Region of Ghana. UHAS is the only state University wholly dedicated to the training of healthcare professionals in Ghana. The main campus including the central administration is located in Ho. A second campus is located at Hohoe. The University started operations in September 2012 with 154 students. Students’ population currently stands at 3,752 (3,727 undergraduates and 25 postgraduates) while the staff strength is 611. Staff to student ratio in UHAS is 17:1, which is currently the best among all state universities in Ghana.

The University currently runs 18 undergraduate programmes in six schools and one institute, namely, School of Public Health, School of Allied Health Sciences, School of Basic and Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Midwifery, School of Pharmacy, and the Institute of Health Research. From the beginning of the 2020/2021 academic year, the School of Sports and Exercise Medicine, School of Dentistry, and Institute of Traditional and Alternate Medicine commenced. Plans are ongoing to establish an Institute of Medical Education.

The School of Public (SPH) is committed to providing a solid foundation in public health and health management within a hands-on experiential learning environment, tutoring and hands-on coaching for students with opportunities for vocational training with health directorates and health facilities throughout the country. The school has four departments (Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Family and Community Health; Health Policy, Planning and Management; and Population and Behavioural Sciences) and conducts scholarly research in a related area. SPH offers an undergraduate programme leading to the Bachelor of Public Health degrees in six thematic specialisations: Health Promotion, Disease Control, Health Information, Nutrition, Environmental Health and Mental Health.

Aligned with the vision of the University of Health and Allied Sciences of becoming a pre-eminent research and practice-oriented health educational institution dedicated to community service, our goal is to establish an equitable, reciprocal, and bi-directional partnership with McGill University’s School of Population and Global Health (SPGH) to pursue research projects and learning opportunities relevant to the needs of UHAS SPH, McGill SPGH and their constituents.

To this end, UHAS SPH intends to initiate a new project in partnership with McGill SPGH to create Ghana’s first longitudinal database on maternal and fetal exposures and associated outcomes and design interventions to promote healthy diet habits and nutritional status of school children through nutrition-friendly school initiatives whereby contributing to inform public health policy and practice in Ghana. The research component of the partnership will involve three initial key activities:

1. Conduct a needs assessment on the nutrition landscape in West Africa focusing on school-based nutrition interventions targeted at school-age children;
2. Examine the nutrition indicators and diet related non-communicable diseases (NCDS) data captured in the Ghana District Health Management Information Systems (DHMIS) database;
3. Map out and develop a database of all schools in the Volta/Oti regions and identify a distribution of public elementary schools currently enrolled on the Ghana school feeding program and the basis for their selection.

Placement Description & Logistics:

Project Assistant Intern I

• Primary Supervisor: Faith Agbozo, PhD, UHAS School of Public Health
• Co-supervisor Marija Djekic-Ivankovic, PhD, McGill School of Population and Global Health

Under the primary supervision of Dr. Faith Agbozo, the intern’s role will be to support the implementation of Activity #1 described above: Conduct a needs assessment on the nutrition landscape in West Africa focusing on school-based nutrition interventions targeted at school-age children.

Internship duration: 12 months

Internship location: Acknowleding that McGill University-sponsored travel continues to be suspended until further notice due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the intern will be physically located in Canada and work remotely (or physically at McGill University campus) under the joint supervision of Drs. Agbozo and Djekic-Ivankovic until such time that s/he can travel internationally in compliance with travel directives provided by UHAS, McGill, the Government of Ghana and the Government of Canada.

Project Assistant Intern II

• Primary Supervisor: Isaac Agbemafle, PhD, UHAS School of Public Health
• Co-Supervisor: TBD from McGill University SPGH

Under the primary supervision of Dr. Isaac Agbemafle, the intern’s role will be to support the implementation of Activity #2 described above: Examine the nutrition indicators and diet related non-communicable diseases (NCDS) data captured in the Ghana District Health Management Information Systems (DHMIS) database.

Internship duration: 12 months

Internship location: Acknowleding that McGill University-sponsored travel continues to be suspended until further notice due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the intern will be physically located in Canada and work remotely (or physically at McGill University campus) under the joint supervision of Dr. Agbemafle and a McGill supervisor TBD until such time that s/he can travel internationally in compliance with travel directives provided by UHAS, McGill, the Government of Ghana and the Government of Canada.