IPA recherche 01 Pediatrician or Early Child Development Consultant

About the Organization

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a research and policy Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA designs, rigorously evaluates and refines these solutions and their applications together with researchers and local decision makers, ensuring evidence is used to improve the lives of the world's poorest populations. Since its founding in 2002, IPA has worked with over 600 leading academics to conduct over 800 evaluations in 51 countries.

Position Overview

IPA is recruiting one Pediatrician or Early Child Development Consultant to support its growth and operations in Yopougon/Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.

Background

While the importance of early childhood development is well recognized globally, universal measures to quantify early childhood development (ECD) are lacking. Research in neuroscience, biology, genetics and social sciences over the past two decades has unequivocally demonstrated that the first 1000 days (from conception to 24 months of age) and the period up to the end of the third year of life are critical for brain development.

The Global Early Development Scale (GSED) is a newly developed scale for early childhood development for children aged 0-3 years. The GSED is the culmination of the work of three groups of researchers who brought together three existing independent initiatives to measure ECD in children under three years of age:

• Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI)
• Global Child Development Group (GCDG)
• Infant and Young Child Development (IYCD)

These organizations have joined forces to create a set of tools that can be used for monitoring child development at the population level and evaluating programs or interventions.