Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health)

UNICEF Opportunity - Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health)

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Contract type

• Fixed Term Appointment

Locations

Latin America and Caribbean Region

• Suriname

Functional Area

Programme

• Health

Position level

• NO-3

Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health), NOC, FT, #138562, Paramaribo, Suriname, Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean

Apply now Job no: 596066

Contract type: Fixed Term Appointment

Duty Station: Paramaribo

Level: NO-3

Location: Suriname

Categories: Health

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built: we offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to health

UNICEF’s Caribbean Multi-Country Office (MCO) serves twelve English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. As part of UNICEF's Future Focus Initiative, the Caribbean MCO brings together policy influence, technical expertise and strategic partnerships to advance results for children across the region through one integrated programme, one management structure and a shared pool of resources. The Multi-Country Programme 2027-2031 focuses on three shared outcomes: equitable access to primary health care, learning and skills; protection of children from all forms of violence; and child poverty reduction and resilience strengthening.

Children across the Caribbean face interconnected challenges including learning losses, mental health concerns, violence, child poverty and increasing exposure to climate-related disasters. Despite many countries being classified as upper-middle or high income, significant inequalities persist, particularly for vulnerable children, adolescents, indigenous communities and those living in remote areas. Small island developing states also face fiscal constraints and heightened vulnerability to economic and climate shocks, requiring stronger regional cooperation and system-based solutions.

The Caribbean MCO’s management strategy is governed by four principles that together translate the new business model into concrete ways of working:

• Impact-driven: technical expertise is organized in shared multi-country working groups rather than replicated in each country, with enabling functions aligned around UNICEF’s strongest comparative advantages.
• Effective and agile: parallel country ecosystems are replaced by harmonized systems and flexible cross-country staffing, keeping management lean and decisions close to implementation.
• Grounded: regional scale is balanced with national depth through country-specific workplans, Heads of Office in each duty station, and matrix management that anchors authority and accountability at country level.
• People-centered: structural and managerial choices are guided by staff wellbeing, transparency and inclusion, with clear role definitions, meaningful consultation, and continuous investment in learning and development.

The operational expression of this model is the working group model. Rather than replicating similar roles across four separate country offices, technical and operational expertise is organized into 16 thematic and functional working groups, each distributed across different duty stations and each serving the full 12-country MCO — not just its host location. Roles are designed around three organizing principles: shared regional service, meaning every specialist contributes to the wider MCO; complementary expertise, meaning team capabilities reinforce each other rather than repeating the same profile in multiple places; and agile presence, meaning the workforce can be rapidly deployed across countries through travel, surge support or remote modalities in line with evolving needs and priorities. This working group model is the foundation of a fundamentally new way of working for UNICEF in the Caribbean: depth replaces duplication, and shared capacity replaces fragmented country-by-country coverage.

The Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health) is part of the Equitable and resilient services for primary health care, learning and skills working group. This group leads the implementation of the CPD outcome on equitable and resilient services that boost children’s nutrition, mental health, learning and skills, by strengthening health and education systems to deliver integrated PHC, nutrition, MHPSS and quality basic and secondary education for all children and adolescents. Its function is to translate this priority into integrated policy packages, service delivery models and scalable solutions across the subregion, ensuring that equity, inclusion and climate-resilience are embedded in the expansion of health and education services and that socio-emotional learning and future-ready skills are systematically advanced in all 12 countries.

The team is led by the Assistant Representative for Equitable and Resilient Services for Primary Health, Learning and Skills (Belize) and includes seven NOC Specialists. The specialist profiles have been defined directly against the CPD outputs under this outcome, so that each post is anchored in a specific strand of work (early learning, foundational learning, policy and public finance, PHC/MHPSS, PHC/nutrition and Early Childhood Development), while together they form a complementary skills mix that covers the full range of expertise required to achieve the intended results. The working group is comprised of the following:

Education

• Specialist (Early Learning) in Belize, Education Specialist (ECD) in Suriname, Education Specialist (Foundational Learning & Skills) in Guyana, Education Specialist (Policy & Budget) in Barbados, Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health) in Suriname, Health Specialist (Policy & Budget) in Jamaica, and Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Nutrition) in Barbados.

• How can you make a difference?

• The Health & Nutrition Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health), reports to the Assistant Representative for Equitable and Resilient Services for Primary Health, Learning and Skills, P4, located in Belize, in close day-to day coordination with the in-country Lead in Suriname.

• The Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health) provides specialized technical expertise in Primary Health Care strengthening and child and adolescent mental health across the Caribbean MCO. The Health Specialist supports the implementation of the MCPD Outcome 1 and Output 1.2 across the Caribbean Multi-country Office. At NOC level, the role contributes substantive depth in health system analysis, mental health policy, and the integration of psychosocial support within primary care — supporting improved health outcomes for children and adolescents across the full platform. This position supports governments and partners to strengthen integrated, equitable, inclusive, and resilient primary health care systems that improve physical and mental health outcomes for children and adolescents.

• Based in Suriname, the position leverages the country's distinct health system context to strengthen UNICEF's capacity to address critical health challenges affecting children and adolescents, with a strong focus on PHC, mental health and access to psychosocial services for Indigenous and Maroon communities in the interior. The Health Specialist will work in close coordination with Health and Education colleagues and other sectors across the MCO to extend this expertise, particularly on mental health integration within primary care, across the broader Caribbean platform.

The key functions and responsibilities are:

• Support to programme development and planning

• Programme management, monitoring, and delivery of results

• Technical support in PHC and Mental Health

• Networking and partnership building

• Capacity building, Digital Health and Innovation

• This position belongs to the Equitable and Resilient Services for Primary Health, Learning and Ski