Senior Associate at Clinton Health Access Initiative

Overview

Base Location: Preference for this role to be based in a CHAI program country, pending country team leadership approval. Strong preference for SSA or a similar time zone.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

Position Overview

CHAI is seeking a Senior Associate to join the Global Vaccines Delivery team to support CHAI’s work in improving coverage and equity through new vaccine introductions and enhancing service delivery across focus countries. The Senior Associate will operate at both country-level and global-level to provide strategic and programmatic support.

Projects could include:

• Diagnose supply- and demand- side service delivery bottlenecks and developing strategies and interventions for improvement;
• re-design service delivery strategies for reaching unvaccinated children;
• develop robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks in which to assess impact of interventions;
• support governments in codifying results for advocacy to affect policy and practice changes;
• support governments in designing strategies for scale up
• Support decision making on new vaccine introductions, robust planning and budgeting for new vaccine rollout, identifying risks to successful introductions, diagnose bottlenecks and designing bottleneck mitigation strategies pre- and post-introduction, identify concrete opportunities and best practices for simultaneously boosting new and routine immunization coverage
• Revamping CHAI mid-term strategy for service delivery and new vaccines
• Creating suitable best practice and lessons learned materials for dissemination among global stakeholders

This is an opportunity to join a fast paced, energized, matrixed team focused on implementing lasting, transformational impact to the global vaccines delivery space. Candidates should be experienced at analyzing & presenting data and messaging powerfully through written documents and presentations; working collaboratively in a fast-paced, multi-cultural environment; and functioning independently with minimal guidance. This role is perfect for someone with management consulting or analytical experience, who is motivated and mission-oriented with strong quantitative, problem-solving, and cross-cultural communication skills.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to:

A. At the Country level, provide strategic and programmatic support to the design and implementation of in-country work within a portfolio of focus countries:

• Contribute to the design, planning and implementation of high-impact work to meet in-country grant and program objectives related to immunization management systems, in line with the program strategy
• Inform country teams of developments in global practices and policies to support strategic decision making, program strategy, and implementation at the national or subnational level
• Develop strong relationships with country team counterparts and provide leadership and direct technical and analytical support in furtherance of country-specific objectives and activities
• Be thoughtful about what it takes to make sustainable, meaningful change in health systems in developing countries

B. At the Global level, provide strategic and programmatic support to inform the global community and to develop CHAI’s vaccines program

• Inform global practices & policies based on robust evidence base, insightful analytical perspective, and lessons learned from CHAI and other partners to immunization service delivery and increase coverage & equity
• Develop relationships with key stakeholders in relevant areas (ie. Gavi, WHO, UNICEF SD, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH, JSI, Sabin etc.) and establish yourself as a respected and trusted thought leader in this area of focus within CHAI and within the global immunization community
• Disseminate CHAI’s programmatic insights to the global immunization community to inform policy and practices
• Support thought leadership and development of CHAI’s vaccines program, in collaboration with program and country leadership, including program/country objectives and strategies as well as scoping and development of new grants
• Provide direct technical support to the development, iteration/improvement, and dissemination of programmatic “toolkit”. Elements of the tool kits may include, but are not limited to, resource allocation and planning of outreach sessions, global policies, tools, and lessons learned
• Assess progress against overall theory of change, objectives & milestones for service delivery; recommend improvements and help prepare high-quality briefings for donors and CHAI management
• Contribute as a member of the global vaccine team to the effectiveness and collegiality of the team, help identify opportunities and improve CHAI’s vaccines program and teamQualifications
• Bachelor’s degree + at least 3 years of relevant professional experience in public or private sector
• Exceptional Technical Capacity, including:
  • outstanding problem-solving and strategic thinking skills
  • strong data analysis and/or experience with quantitative modeling and study design
  • proficiency at Microsoft Excel or other data-analysis tools (specialized modeling or programing experience is NOT required)
  • program management capability (basic planning +organization, ability to outline process steps and manage small to medium sized projects at either the country or global level or support and oversight from Manager, NVISD)
• Excellent Communication and Relationship Management:
  • strong interpersonal and cross-cultural communication, both written and verbal, including skills in English (synthesis & presentation) with diverse audience;
  • demonstrated capacity to synthesize evidence into effective presentations and actionable recommendations for broad range of audiences
  • proven track record of building strong & effective working relationships remotely
  • proven ability to influence without authority (in decision making, to achieve consensus or alignment, or to drive programmatic work)
• Team Culture + Autonomy:
  • excellent ability to work independently, set and achieve ambitious targets with limited guidance, and manage competing and sometimes shifting priorities, often under tight or shifting deadlines
  • proven ability to work collaboratively in a multicultural, matrixed environment;
• Ability to travel extensively (at least 35% of time) to focus countries and other locations as needed for work

Advantages

• Masters-level or above in business, finance, or health science preferred
• Knowledge and experience in vaccines, health systems strengthening, and/or health financing
• Experience working in management consulting, investment banking, or similar fast-paced, output-oriented environments
• Experience working with government and in low/middle income countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Professional proficiency in a second language of a vaccine program country

Overview of CHAI’s Vaccines program

Immunization is one of the most successful public health interventions in history. National immunization programs reach >100 million infants every year and have averted globally two to three million deaths every year since the launch of the Expanded Program for Immunization (EPI) in 1974 , whilst the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and rotavirus vaccines could save ~1 million lives per year. Furthermore, great advances in discovering and financing new vaccines provides a great opportunity for countries to further reduce burden of disease such as human papillomavirus (HPV). Despite these successes, 1.5 million children still die each year of vaccine-preventable diseases, many of them in low-income countries, as immunization programs there face unprecedented challenges.
Since 2010, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) has worked to save lives and reduce the burden from vaccine preventable diseases by improving access to immunization services in resource-limited setting by strengthening national immunization programs and by leveraging its experience in-country to improve the global immunization ecosystem. CHAI is pursuing six complementary strategic goals:

1. Improving affordability and supply security of immunization products;
2. Accelerating the uptake of new or under-utilized vaccines;
3. Enhancing the performance of vaccine cold chain and logistics systems to increase effective immunization coverage;
4. Improving the design and implementation of service delivery to reach the unreached
5. Supporting successful transition from Gavi support; and
6. Strengthening the management system and capacity of immunization programs

CHAI’s vaccine program very closely supports the national immunization programs in 11 focus countries – Cameroon, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Lesotho, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam- and also engages with global stakeholders such as Gavi, WHO and UNICEF to inform global policies and practices.

Immunization Service Delivery

Despite significant gains made in immunization coverage from 21% in 1980,^[1] global DTP3 coverage has stalled at approximately 85% since 2010, while DTP3 coverage in Africa has stagnated at 76% as of 2015. As a result, nearly one quarter of children under-5 in the region are under- or unimmunized. Immunization coverage is generally much lower for vaccines that are delivered via weaker or complex delivery platforms, such as maternal, neonatal, 9-month, second year and adolescent – whether current vaccines or those slated for introduction.^[2] For example, only 28% of African countries have maintained 90% measles conjugate vaccine / measles rubella vaccine first dose (MCV1/MR1)[3] coverage since 2013.^[4]

CHAI therefore will develop, test, and scale innovative service delivery interventions in focus countries, with the objective to increase coverage in priority populations in a way that can be scaled and sustained by governments. CHAI will support governments to (i) improve the planning and the performance management of immunization sessions; (ii) improve the linkages of maternal and newborn health services with immunization to increase routine immunization coverage and strengthen the neonatal platform used for OPV, BCG, and HepB birth dose; (iii) increase the routine coverage of the nine-month platform (when vaccines against measles, yellow fever, meningitis A or Typhoid should be administered); and (iv) develop better informed coverage plans and support the implementation of key service delivery strategies to target unimmunized children. CHAI will distill the tools and lessons learned from this work in focus countries and disseminate them to the global community.

^[1] CDC. Global Routine Vaccination Coverage, 2016. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/pdfs/mm6645a3-H.PDF

^[2] Since 2011, the uptake of impactful new vaccines, including Pentavalent, PCV and Rotavirus, has significantly progressed, enabled by financial support from Gavi and partners. However, these vaccines relied upon the most effective delivery platform in most countries, one that reaches children between the second to fourth month of life.

[3] Please see Appendix 4: Acronyms for guidance with acronyms and abbreviations

^[4]Measles elimination in the WHO African Region: Progress and challenges, 2015

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