Senior Technical Advisor, Health Workforce

Overview

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication, and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Program Overview

The WHO estimates a projected shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, with the majority of that shortage (7.5 million) falling in low- and middle-income countries. Many of the governments with which CHAI works face significant challenges producing the workforce at the quantity and quality needed to meet the demands of their health systems. In addition, in many of the countries where CHAI works, there is not only a gross shortage of health workers, but the existing workforce is characterized by suboptimal skill mix, distribution, and performance—which means that governments are facing significant inefficiencies and unable to get the most out of their existing resources.

The aim of CHAI’s Health Workforce Program is to ensure that our partner governments can optimize the number, skill mix, performance, and distribution of their health workforces within available resources. When this is the case, governments will be able to make progress toward UHC and PHC by maximizing the extent to which available, high performing, and motivated health workers can provide quality services when and where needed.

Governments are increasingly prioritizing PHC as a step toward UHC. With that in mind and given our strategic focus on resource optimization, CHAI is increasingly working with governments on workforce development for PHC—including community health workers (CHWs). Though CHWs are a cornerstone of PHC, community health systems in LMICs have been particularly plagued by fragmentation, verticalization, and inadequate resources in many of the contexts where CHAI’s work.

CHAI’s Health Workforce Strategy outlines five overarching objectives:

• Objective 1: Align supply and demand — Define health workforce requirements and implement systems to realize targets, including aligning pre-service training supply and strengthening systems for evidence-based deployment
• Objective 2: Improve competency and performance – Strengthen continuous learning and performance management systems and address gaps in pre-service training to improve health worker performance
• Objective 3: Reduce inefficiencies – Identify and address sources of inefficiency in workforce financing and programming to maximize the impact of available resources, including through advancing government-owned systems for health workforce planning, management, and resource coordination
• Objective 4: Build institutional capacity — Institutionalize government-led systems and structures for health workforce planning, management, and training
• Objective 5: Support governments to define, operationalize and scale national integrated community health systems.

Position Overview

This role will support the design and implementation of health workforce investment strategies in partnership with donors, governments, and academic institutions across multiple countries. The position will be a critical contributor to CHAI's health workforce team, providing strategic, technical, and coordination support across pre-service training reform, faculty development and sustainability planning, equipment procurement, and infrastructure scoping.

This role will support development of relationships with philanthropic donors, government counterparts, academic partners, and internal CHAI teams. They will advise donors on investment planning processes including governance, contracting, and results frameworks, while working with academic institutions to strengthen faculty development programs and address barriers to sustainability.

We are seeking a highly experienced individual with deep expertise in health workforce development, health systems strengthening, and donor engagement in low- and middle-income countries. The candidate must be comfortable operating across multiple technical domains, countries, and institutional partners with a high degree of independence. They must bring skills in grant management and stakeholder coordination. CHAI places great value on relevant professional skills including strategic thinking, adaptability, relationship management, and the ability to maintain coherence across complex, multipartner programs.

Responsibilities

Advising donors on the design for their health workforce investment strategies

• Design workforce investment planning processes and workflows, including governance and contracting processes
• Contribute strategic thinking to overall design, including partner roles, timelines, etc.
• Advise on pre-service training interventions, faculty sustainability planning, faculty development systems/programs, institutionalization of community health worker training, medical curriculum reform, clinical simulation capacity development, infrastructure planning, health systems and facility management training, CPD systems building, e-learning platforms, and any other relevant intervention areas based on expertise
• Develop a framework for faculty sustainability plans; work with partners to review, refine, and finalize faculty sustainability plans
• Design results framework linked to theory of change that can inform measurement, evaluation, and learning agenda

Academic partner health workforce development strategy

• Design a performance management framework for strengthening faculty development programs
• Assist with development of strategic direction and key performance indicators
• Review and provide feedback on periodic project reports
• Co-design pre-service training faculty development and sustainability plans
• Work with academic partners to identify and address barriers to successful implementation and faculty development sustainability planning; assist academic partners to support successful implementation of project objectives including sustainability goals
• Analyse ongoing progress and make recommendations to academic partners on project administration and implementation

Medical equipment procurement coordination program

• Coordinate partners to deliver on government equipment procurement requests to support workforce investments
• Advise on rationalization of procurement requests including strategic integration with health worker training, workflow management, and other systems

Lead scoping for new CHAI work areas in infrastructure and biomedical equipment management, defining the technical approach, internal capacity, and developing the technical and operational strategy, funding pipeline, and partnerships required to deliver at scale across CHAI's country programs

• Lead technical collaboration with existing infrastructure partners on select major hospital infrastructure projects and scope broader infrastructure collaboration opportunities
• Work with existing CHAI programs to scope and design a program to strengthen national biomedical equipment technician workforces and management systems

Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years’ progressive leadership experience in health workforce development with health systems strengthening perspective
• Direct experience with health workforce intervention planning, funding, and implementation within a ministry of health or equivalent national-level government agency
• Direct experience with pre-service training reform for professional health workers internal to a higher education institution in a low-income country; specific expertise and experience in designing and implementing faculty sustainability plans and faculty development systems/programs within training institutions
• Experience developing and coordinating higher education partnerships between higher education institutions, and working with senior academic leadership on the design and management of these partnerships
• Strong understanding of grant management processes and workflows, including grant management capacity building
• Demonstrated ability to design and scale organizational structures, including building staffing models, creating performance management and goal-setting systems, and growing teams across multiple countries and institutional partners
• Legal training or equivalent expertise relevant to contract negotiation, regulatory frameworks, procurement processes, and governance structures in international development or philanthropic fund management
• Experience with national-level community health policy integration
• High-level donor management experience, including direct engagement with philanthropic donor principals
• Experience drafting high-level communications and briefings between senior government officials and donors
• Experience designing and implementing monitoring, evaluation, and learning frameworks and data systems for multi-site programs in contexts where CHAI operates
• Experience with global health equipment markets, including price negotiations, market-shaping initiatives, cost analysis across multiple scenarios and geographies
• Experience in financial modelling and cost analysis for health programs, including demand forecasting, benchmark pricing, and budget rationalization across national procurement processes
• Experience planning and implementing major health facility infrastructure projects

Advantages

• Proficiency in French, Portuguese or other languages relevant to CHAI's operating contexts in sub-Saharan Africa

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