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The Mental Health Director serves as the senior clinical and programmatic leader for PIH/IMB’s Mental Health Program, providing strategic, technical, and hands-on leadership to ensure high-quality, patient-centered, and equitable mental health care across all IMB-supported facilities.
This is a clinically grounded leadership role. The Director is expected to bring deep clinical expertise in mental health and to actively guide, mentor, and strengthen care delivery at hospital, health center, and community levels. The role combines clinical stewardship, quality improvement leadership, systems strengthening, and national partnership engagement, ensuring that IMB’s decentralized mental health model continues to set a standard for excellence in Rwanda and across PIH globally. |
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1. Clinical Leadership & Quality of Care
- Provide overall clinical leadership for mental health services across IMB-supported hospitals and health centers, ensuring safe, evidence-based, and compassionate care.
- Lead the development, dissemination, and implementation of clinical guidelines, care pathways, and standard operating procedures for priority mental health and neurological conditions.
- Ensure the quality of pharmacological, psychological, and psychosocial interventions, including psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, epilepsy and neurological care, and psychosocial rehabilitation.
- Champion patient safety initiatives, including management of psychiatric emergencies, , and dignity-centered care practices.
- Provide direct clinical mentorship and supervision to senior mental health clinicians, including but not limited to psychologists, psychiatric nurses, and clinical coordinators.
- Support integration of mental health into other clinical platforms (NCDs, HIV, oncology, PDC, MCH), ensuring holistic and person-centered care.
2. Program Management & Systems Strengthening
- Provide strategic oversight of all Mental Health Program activities across Burera, Kirehe, and Southern Kayonza districts.
- Ensure strong coordination between IMB mental health teams, hospital leadership, health centers, and community structures.
- Strengthen service delivery systems, including referral pathways, task-sharing models, community accompaniment, and continuity of care.
- Work closely with Health Systems Strengthening, Supply Chain, and Infrastructure teams to address gaps in space, equipment, medications, and staffing that affect quality of care.
3. Mentorship, Capacity Building & Workforce Development
- Provide overall leadership for capacity building and mentorship strategies, including the MESH-MH model and hospital-based mentorship.
- Guide the development and rollout of training curricula for mental health professionals, general nurses, social workers, CHWs, and community partners.
- Support professional development and retention of mental health staff, with particular attention to preventing burnout and promoting staff wellbeing.
- Collaborate with national institutions and academic partners to strengthen pre-service and in-service training, including clerkships, fellowships, and visiting faculty programs.
4. Quality Improvement, Data Use & Learning
- Lead a strong culture of continuous quality improvement (CQI) across all mental health services.
- Oversee the design, implementation, and monitoring of quality improvement projects, including those related to Problem Management Plus (PM+) completion, psychiatric emergencies, and patient safety.
- Ensure effective use of routine data (EMR, HMIS, program dashboards) to inform clinical decisions, mentorship priorities, and program improvements.
- Promote learning across sites through regular clinical reviews, case discussions, and cross-site learning forums.
5. Research, Innovation & Knowledge Generation
- Provide strategic oversight to the Mental Health research agenda, ensuring alignment with program priorities and ethical standards.
- Support implementation research on decentralized mental health care, psychotherapy delivery, psychosocial rehabilitation, and integration models.
- Mentor IMB staff and collaborators in translating program experience into publications, conference presentations, and policy-relevant evidence.
- Represent IMB mental health work in national, regional, and global learning platforms.
6. Partnerships, Representation & National Alignment
- Serve as the primary clinical and strategic representative of the IMB Mental Health Program with the Ministry of Health, Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC), and national referral institutions.
- Participate in national technical working groups and policy discussions related to mental health.
- Strengthen partnerships with academic institutions including national universities and training institutions such as the University of Rwanda and University of Global Health Equity, implementing partners, and donors to advance shared priorities. Specifically, he/she will lead partnership efforts with UGHE Dept of Psychiatry (and other academic institutions) for clinical training and capacity building, leveraging PIH’s care delivery model as a training platform.
- Ensure IMB mental health work remains fully aligned with national strategies and contributes meaningfully to national scale-up efforts.
7. Budget, Planning & Reporting
- Provide strategic oversight of the Mental Health Program budget, in collaboration with the relevant team members and Finance teams.
- Support resource mobilization efforts, including grant development and donor reporting.
- Ensure timely, high-quality quarterly and annual program reports, grounded in clinical realities and patient outcomes.
- Contribute to IMB’s multi-year strategic planning and monitoring processes.
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| Required Qualifications
- Education background:
- A Bachelor’s degree Mental health related field or advanced clinical qualification is strongly preferred.
- A Master’s degree in Public Health, Global Health, or Health Systems is an added advantage.
- Work Experience:
- Significant clinical experience delivering and supervising mental health care, preferably in decentralized or resource-limited settings.
- Demonstrated leadership in quality of care, patient safety, and clinical mentorship.
- Experience managing multidisciplinary teams across multiple sites.
- Strong understanding of task-sharing models, community-based mental health care, and integrated service delivery.
- Proven ability to work effectively with Ministries of Health and national partners.
- Willingness to travel frequently within Rwanda and flexible work hours
- Excellent communication, teaching, mentoring, and leadership skills.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English and Kinyarwanda
- Commitment to social justice, equity, and PIH/IMB values.
- Exemplary interpersonal skills; ability to collaborate effectively with culturally diverse staff across departments and country
- Patient and flexible
- Ability to work and live in a rural setting
- Ability to live PIH/IMB values: Ubumuntu-Compassion, Ubupfura-Integrity, Ubunyangamugayo-Honesty, Ubwubahane-Mutual respect, Ubufatanye-Solidarity, Agaciro-Dignity, Kugira ishyaka-Determination.
Commitment to Safeguarding and Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Sexual Harassment:
At Partners in Health, we are committed to ensuring that those who benefit from our work- including our patients, the families and community members – as well as our staff are treated with dignity and respect and protected from sexual exploitation, abuse and sexual harassment. A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Partner in Health’s PSEAH policy. Partner in Health will request information from applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment.
By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of this commitment, their readiness to follow it, and adhere to it. |
