Ethiopia: Senior Technical Advisor, Health Insurance

The Senior Technical Advisor will work in close collaboration with the Team Leader to support the scaling up of the National Health Insurance Schemes in Ethiopia. S/he will be responsible for providing technical, operational and managerial support to the Ethiopian Health Insurance Agency for the effective implementation of the National Health Financing Strategy (NHFS, 2015-2020). S/he will introduce methodologies that will be applied including cost effectiveness studies, unit costing of health interventions, health budget and expenditure surveys, and feasibility or policy analyses of proposals for scaling up community based and social/universal health insurance programs.

The Senior Technical Advisor, Health Insurance will provide high level technical assistance to policymakers, and write reports, and policy and technical briefs to inform relevant audiences. S/he will collaborate with the federal level government, Ethiopian Health Insurance Agency and partners to provide technical direction and smooth rolling out of the social health insurance (SHI) and the expansion of community based health insurance (CBHI) schemes, including the planning, costing and implementation. S/he will facilitate the development of strategic and operational plans including the implementation to improve and sustain regional government planning, financing, health and resource mobilization.

Specific Responsibilities

1. Provide technical leadership and direction for the development and implementation of strategies and programs that will improve domestic financing for health; refine and scale up community and social health insurance schemes for improving financial protection against unplanned health expenditure.
2. Build functional collaboration with the Ethiopian Health Insurance Agency to ensure on-going health insurance reforms are translated into regional governments systems and plans at the different levels of the Agency at headquarter and the branch offices
3. Set up systems to facilitate monitoring and early identification of problem areas during the roll-out and implementation of the insurance schemes and work with management to address these problems as they arise.
4. Uses various quantitative and qualitative techniques to perform costing and health financing policy analyses.
5. Develops, reviews, and/or prepares necessary technical and program related reports, including presentations, briefs and working papers.
6. Guides and supports protocol development, research, data collection, policy formulation, training and capacity building efforts in support of project activities and deliverables.
7. Support the development of communication and promotional strategies in the public health space
8. Provides health economics, health finance and costing expertise/technical assistance to the programme
9. Ensures quality of services and compliance per project/program requirements.
10. Provide technical inputs to the project implementation team in order to assist in reaching program goals and objectives as well as to strategically inform the decisions on project performance and future direction to the project.
11. Collaborate with technical leads and STTAs to provide regularly updated reports on the status of implementation against the project goals and objectives to stakeholders as required.
12. Collaborate with the project team in identifying project activities, processes and/or outcomes that are worthy of documentation, and design a system for capturing lessons learned and best practices.
13. Adhere to MSH procurement integrity and institutional standards and procedures in all project management responsibilities.

Qualifications

1. Minimum of master’s degree in Public Health, Economics or Health Economics, and Finance, or any other relevant discipline.
2. 10 years’ experience in Health Systems Strengthening, with specific expertise in health insurance/ financing.
3. At least 8 years’ experience in the development of strategic and operational plans with senior management teams in Ministries of Health and/or related Departments, Civil Society Organization.
4. Detailed understanding of the roll out cycle of insurance schemes, including the planning, costing and implementation phases
5. Experience in developing capacity building plans related to health systems and insurance
6. Ability to develop, interpret policies, tools and approaches
7. Proven capability in developing communication and promotion strategies in the public health space.
8. Excellent ability to think systematically and strategically (System Strengthening thinker).
9. Strong conceptual and analytical skills and an ability to apply these in continually improving programme activities and performance.
10. Well-developed capacity to provide supportive supervision to a broad range of technical areas.
11. Strong management, organizational and co-ordination skills.
12. Outstanding leadership and team building skills.
13. Highly dynamic networking and relationship building skills including experience building consensus among diverse actors.
14. Excellent communication (written and oral), interpersonal and teamwork skills, and ability to relate to others confidently.
15. Meeting deadlines, multi-tasking and being flexible to adapt to changing priorities.
16. Proficiency in MS Office packages, particularly Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.
17. Fluent written and oral English language skills.
18. Previous working experience in Africa.

Background Information

MSH saves lives and improves health by helping public and private organizations throughout the world to effectively manage people, medicines, money, and information. Working from more than 40 country offices and our Arlington, Virginia, and Medford, Massachusetts, US headquarters, our staff from more than 70 nations is highly regarded for its technical expertise, integrity, and commitment to making a lasting difference in health. We live our mission to save lives and improve the health of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health.
Management Sciences for Health (MSH) is seeking a Senior Technical Advisor, Health Insurance for a potential DFID funded programme in Ethiopia named Sustaining and Accelerating Primary Health in Ethiopia (SAPHE). The programme is aimed at sustaining and accelerating the pace of improvement in adolescent, maternal and child health as well as improving the functionality of primary health care units; reduce health inequalities and increase domestic financing for health. SAPHE will adopt two modalities to achieve its objectives:
The first modality is a performance fund which will be administered and implemented by Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) of Ethiopia for: enhancing the skills of primary level health care providers; increasing the availability of essential medicines; and, improving the readiness of primary health care units for providing quality adolescent, maternal and child health care.
The second modality is provision of technical assistance to the FMOH for: implementing of the HSTP’s Health Transformation Agenda; promoting and protecting public health by ensuring safety and quality of health products and services; effective implementation of the National Health Financing Strategy (NHFS, 2015-2020) for improving financing, particularly domestic financing for health; and, refining and scaling up community and social health insurance schemes for improving financial protection against unplanned health expenditure.

EEO Statement

Management Sciences for Health is an equal opportunity employer offering employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, citizenship, physical or mental disability, or veteran status.

Reports To

Team Leader

Visit the MSH website to Apply!

https://jobs-msh.icims.com/jobs/9123/senior-technical-advisor%2c-health-insurance/job