Patrick David Chirilele

Patrick Chirilele is a passionate public health professional with knowledge, experience, and expertise in improving population health and tackling health inequalities and healthcare quality at a local, regional, and national level. He offers expertise in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems, data use for strategic planning, data quality improvement and evidence-based decision-making through routine program reporting and secondary data. Mr.

Chirilele has strong experience designing M&E frameworks; implementing M&E plans; developing M&E tools for the South African Government's Department of Health (DOH) staff; conducting data quality audits; and strengthening data quality. Patrick has excellent existing relationships with the provincial DOH in various parts of the country and collaborates well with government stakeholders at all levels, including implementing partners funded under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund (GF) AIDS Program in South Africa (SA) and other stakeholders. He is skilled in database software such as SPSS, STATA, MS Access and TIER.net.

Patrick's special interests are in public policy and its impact on population health outcomes, applied health economics, healthcare quality and addressing inequities in health outcomes gained from working in different settings. He has very strong interests in academia and continues to promote proven healthy lifestyle choices and interventions on various platforms, including social media.

Researcher at Trinity College Dublin (2024-08 – Present)

Conducts Health Economics research at the Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin on a new research programme called EMERALD-Lewy: Improving the diagnosis, management, and lived experience of overlooked dementias in Ireland. This research programme is funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) under the Applied Programme Grants (APRO) 2023.

• Under the PI's supervision, support all aspects of the project, including protocol development, amendments and publication, ethics and other approvals, and overall study conduct and governance, ensuring the project is delivered on time and target
• Support clinical recruitment, manage participant booking and visit scheduling, obtain informed consent from participants, conduct clinical assessments and collect clinical research data.
• Leads the setup of the data management process, maintaining data integrity, and preparing data for statistical analyses, ensuring its reliability and usability in a variety of computer programs.
• Present findings to interdisciplinary audiences at seminars and conferences.
• Contribute to the organisation and running of PPI events.
• Support and work cooperatively with other members of the project and the wider team.
• Generate internationally peer-reviewed publications in high-impact scientific journals.

M&E Program Manager at ECORBIT HEALTH (PTY) LTD (2022-08 – 2024-07)

Patrick was part of an accomplished team of health and development experts at ECORBIT HEALTH, providing services to government, donor agencies and NGOs in designing, managing, implementing, and evaluating health and development programs. Patrick was responsible for the management of program staff, safety, and security external relationships (including donors and Ecorbit partners), and management of quality and risk. His expertise included drafting scopes of work, documenting and managing project expectations in jointly developed MoUs, liaising with partners in the drafting of project plans, and project reporting.

• Supporting the implementation and development of the program portfolio.
• Contribute to the mobilization of resources to support planned activities.
• Regular field visits, to project sites including discussions with beneficiaries.
• Ensuring strong donor compliance, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and quality control procedures are understood and entrenched in the programs.
• Create and maintain a cooperative and positive working environment where staff have clear roles and responsibilities, participate in decision making and are supported in progressing towards their objectives.
• Fundraising for projects, ensuring formal funder project sign-off, compliance of program deliverable requirements and strategies are aligned to program outcomes for all key stakeholders.
• Representing Ecorbit Health at technical, policy, and strategic planning meetings with governments and key stakeholders.
• Overseeing the production and delivery of quality periodic reports.
• Incorporate analysis and lessons learned into new strategies/activities.

National COVID-19 Assessment Program – Provincial Team Lead at Institute of Health Programs and Systems (IHPS) (2021-07 – 2022-07)

In 2021, the National Department of Health (NDoH) through its partnership with Isibani Development appointed the Institute of Health Programs and Systems (IHPS) to manage COVID-19 responses for the NDoH. Patrick and his team were tasked to assess the overall readiness of public health facilities across six provinces and to identify a set of priority actions to be taken to prepare for, be ready for and respond to the pandemic. This work was funded through the Global Fund COVID-19 Response Mechanism (C19RM) and formed one of the key C19RM activities aimed at strengthening the NDoH COVID-19 response.

• Provided leadership support to the Provincial teams and ensured team structures were capacitated to produce the best results for the success of each individual program pillar.
• Assessed the Facilities' Surge Capacity (HR, Bed Capacity, oxygen supply) and capacity for Infection Prevention & Control using the facility assessment Tool (FAT).
• Provided technical support on the triage of Suspected COVID-19 Cases.
• Identified and reported on HSS opportunities.
• Compiled Provincial and individual facility reports on the readiness of hospitals in South Africa to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Program Consultant at Back and Safe Initiative (2020-03 – 2021-06)

Back & Safe was an initiative created in support of the South African government's efforts to address the unprecedented disruptions that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused. The Back & Safe consortium comprised of five partner organizations with more than 100 years of combined experience in public health, environmental safety, health supply chain management, health systems and capacity development, quality improvement consulting, and health and business information systems analytics.

• Implemented comprehensive on-site Assessments of COVID-19 Risks in business/org./institution premises as required.
• Reviewed Knowledge management systems including monitoring and evaluation of implementation processes of the Covid-19 mitigation measures within the organization.
• Reviewed policies and procedures against the Standards for public and employee safety, including mechanisms to ensure Sustained implementation.

MCom in Finance – University of Johannesburg (2022)

PGdip in Financial Planning – University of Free State (2020)

BSc in Statistics and Economics – University of Free State (2019)

Matriculation – Castlebridge Combined School (2015)