The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

In Ethiopia, the foundation’s health and nutrition program aims to address systems inefficiencies, develop data-driven insights, and pilot new delivery approaches and innovations with the potential for scale. The overarching goal of the program is to contribute to Ethiopia’s achievement of critical primary health care outcomes, including immunization, nutrition, and reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health goals. These goals are articulated in the Government of Ethiopia’s (GOE)Health Sector Development Investment Plan (HSDIP).

The Ethiopia Integrated Health Team (EIHT) support includes service delivery; data systems; supply chain; health financing; innovation, research, and scale; and nutrition. To foster a country-led approach, the Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) shapes investments that are in alignment with government priorities while also considering foundation’s proficiencies, values – including a “One Foundation approach” that emphasizes strong internal coordination across teams, and mandates, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as gender-sensitive programming. Within innovation, research, and scale, the foundation’s focus in Ethiopia is on the following:
• Explore approaches for relevant health and nutrition innovation introduction – both locally and internationally inspired – to address Ethiopia’s significant burden of disease and potential for impact to drive down mortality for mothers, newborns, and children.
• Support the testing and feasibility (including clinical and implementation research) of potentially impactful innovations, which can be new and/or proven products, commodities, interventions, service delivery approaches, and processes.
• Support the GOE’s strengthening of an innovation, research, and scale pathway – including the development of the GOE’s research prioritization agenda, strengthening of relevant GOE units (e.g. research institutions, the Ministry of Health’s policy and research directorate and innovation unit, Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI)), their linkages, and approaches for institutionalization and scale.
• Strengthen the capacities of Ethiopia’s relevant research and scale institutions to promote evidence generation and translation of evidence to policy to enable scale of key innovations.

Application Deadline: 21/9/2024

Your Role

The Senior Program Officer (SPO), Research, Innovation, and Scale will be a key part of the EIHT and will lead the foundation’s programming in innovation, research, and scale of new and proven health products, interventions, and approaches in the sector. In addition, they will contribute to the foundation’s programming to strengthen healthcare service delivery mechanisms in Ethiopia.

Given the focus areas above, the post holder will strategically develop and lead one or more portfolios of grants and contracts requiring high-level grant leadership skills, monitoring, and evaluation. As a key advisor on strategy initiatives, the SPO is expected to identify key issues and priorities emerging from Ethiopia’s health sector context – through coordination, collaboration, and cultivating partnerships with GOE, development partners, NGOs, research institutions, and other collaborators (including multilateral agencies). In doing so, they will contribute to the continued development of the team’s strategic vision, while partnering closely with team leadership to set the overall strategy and goals for the team. Finally, the SPO is expected to be self-sufficient and able to deliver the required results with minimal direction.

The postholder will be based in Addis Ababa and will report to the Ethiopia-based Deputy Director of Health and Nutrition.

What You’ll Do

The selected candidate will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Inclusively lead, shape, and handle support for research (including clinical, and implementation research), innovation, and scale of new products, interventions, and approaches in Ethiopia – using a data-driven approach.
• Contribute to the implementation of the health service delivery portfolio.
• Support the execution of foundations’ country health and nutrition coordinated plan of support in close partnership with fellow EIHT members – to ensure responsiveness to the Ethiopian context and health sector needs. Analyze and use data to interrogate team hypotheses and support better decision-making.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and other health ecosystem collaborators around pathways to scale coupled with helping navigate research (Implementation and clinical research) translation to policy and practice to achieve institutionalization of the selected innovations in the health system.
• Cultivate strong working relationships with multiple teams within the foundation, government partners, and other national collaborators to strengthen the pathway for innovation, research, and scale of health interventions. Proactively identify and pursue synergies, areas of leverage, and opportunities for co-managed and/or co-financed collaborations to achieve foundation and country goals.
• Work with the EIHT Senior Program Officer for Monitoring, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) and Data, and the Deputy Director to supervise regular progress tracking for those bodies of work and investments led by the incumbent – to supervise foundation programming in innovation, research, and scale in contributing to national health impact targets. Help operationalize processes, which will feed data and analysis from grants and research back into key strategy and portfolio management decisions.
• Design, negotiate, and lead complex grant portfolio(s) that include collaborating with grantees to achieve the desired impact of grants; conduct site visits when appropriate, provide technical mentorship, convene meetings, and apply and evaluate milestone-based performance objectives. Ensure appropriate documentation, grant budgeting, and reporting, as well as operational efficiency and effectiveness.
• Keep tabs on relevant local and global developments and needs in the health sector, as well as grant/program changes and progress to advise and recommend tools and strategies to increase investment performances and results against the agreed-upon results framework and in alignment with the broader EIHP MLE plan.
• Work on complex problems; analysis of situations and/or data requiring in-depth evaluation of various factors.
• Exercise good judgment within broadly defined practices and policies to select methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
• Independently identify issues, formulate and design plans, and implement ideas for major initiatives.
• Consult with grantees and other partners to enhance the impact of projects and ensure grants are meeting strategy goals. This may include – site visits, providing operational mentorship, and convening meetings of key stakeholders.
• Contribute to the design of new strategies, collaborations, and implementation plans to ensure long-term sustainability and impact.
• Represent the foundation to key program-related external constituencies, as appropriate, on committees related to the area of expertise and responsibilities of the position. This may also include engaging in global conferences and forums to share experience of implementation in Ethiopia and learn about relevant health interventions and opportunities that could be applicable in the Ethiopian context.
• Embed diversity, equity, and inclusion principles into the implementation of day-to-day work, interactions with colleagues, and investments.

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