Are you interested in helping lead an entrepreneurial effort aimed at changing paradigms in international development, and in true partnerships with governments to reduce donor dependency and increase financial sustainability? Would you be excited to leverage your private sector background to help finance health systems? Do you get energy from working with different stakeholders – ranging from Wall Street banking institutions to ministries of health and finance to UN agencies? Are you looking to join a team of partners that are committed, experienced, and fun to work with? Then you should explore this leadership role with the Financing Alliance for Health.
FINANCING ALLIANCE FOR HEALTH OVERVIEW
Financing Alliance for Health (FAH), partners with the government on all steps of financing to strengthen, and sustain community health systems, leveraging primary health care to attain universal health coverage. (FAH partners long-term with Ministries of Health and Ministries of Finance teams to develop different and changing financing sources). FAH draws on private sector knowledge of financial structuring and access to private sector and development finance opportunities to increase and diversify funding options for governments to scale and sustain community health systems.
The aim of our work is to increase access, coverage and utilization of quality primary health services at household level, in a culturally appropriate manner so as to reduce morbidity and mortality. Community health systems have a proven track record of economic, social and health impact through the thousands of jobs created for predominantly female, marginalized and young community health workers (CHWs).
In early 2015, UN Special Envoy Ray Chambers and Prime Minister Hailemariam of Ethiopia convened a high-level group to assess financing and scale-up of Community Health Worker (CHW) programs in Africa. At the Financing for Development event in July, the group launched a report that outlined the case for investment in CHWs, existing and new CHW financing mechanisms, pathways for financing CHW programs, and principles of best-practice CHW systems.
The report recommended creation of a ‘financing support unit’ (now called the ‘Financing Alliance for Health’) to help countries access financing for health systems (and community health in particular), given the complexity of the funding landscape, the challenges of utilizing domestic resources, and the difficulty of capitalizing on available funding opportunities. This Financing Alliance would also be charged with identifying and tapping into private sector financing and developing new, creative and ‘out-of-the-box’ models of ‘blended’ financing that combine domestic and international support with private sources of capital, including from corporations.
The FAH (through support from its partners) soft-launched its activities in January 2016 in the four anticipated “business lines” of the Alliance: (1) Country support: the team launched a pilot project in Liberia, which culminated in a set of recommendations to the Ministry of Health of Liberia in December. In addition, the Financing Alliance is supporting work in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Malawi, South Africa and has been asked to consider supporting a number of additional developing countries (2) Analytical toolkit: Refining toolkits to support country costs, investment cases, and financing pathways. (3) Financing products/modalities: Cataloging existing options while building new tools; and (4) Market building/awareness and education: developing funding baseline, country case studies, and advocacy.
Our Core Values
● Respect and trust as the basis of our relationships
● Challenging and disrupting the status quo for impact
● Curios, passionate, and effective in our approach
● Driven to support the well-being of communities
AFRICA FRONTLINE FIRST INITIATIVE OVERVIEW
The Africa Frontline First (AFF) Initiative is a collaborative initiative that supports the scaling and strengthening of integrated and sustainable community health delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Under the leadership of H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Financing Alliance for Health, Last Mile Health, Community Health Acceleration Partnership, and Community Health Impact Coalition are currently the key driving partners of AFF. Through unique partnerships between governments, donors, implementers, and technical allies, AFF will support ten countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in building high-functioning, resilient, country-led community health service delivery systems. These systems will include an expanded and institutionalized workforce of 200,000 community health workers across the 10 countries by 2030. AFF works cross three pillars:
Financing: Advocate, design and support implementation of sustainable funding mechanisms that enable transformed financing
Political will: Cultivate regional political will and champions to support accelerating community health reforms, including domestic financing
Community engagement: Foster peer-to-peer learning to optimize country-led community health performance supported by technical partners
Anchored within their local context and health reform journey of each participating country, this support from AFF will help them:
Reduce excess morbidity and mortality. Advance prevention, vaccination, testing, and treatment to reduce the impact of COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS, and support maternal and child health
Advance health security. Bolster integrated digital disease surveillance in the community health workforce to monitor, quickly detect, and respond to emergent infectious disease threats
Accelerate economic recovery. Build a compensated workforce of trained, supplied, digitally equipped, and supervised community health workers–especially women–who contribute to the formal economy.
POSITION DESCRIPTION
The Head of Country Programmes will be a key leader of the Financing Alliance for Health.
In collaboration with the CEO, the Head of Country Programmes will develop and lead engagement with countries but will also have a broader strategy and leadership role within the executive team. In the true nature of a start-up, the Head of Country Programmes may be asked to support other activities on an ad-hoc basis.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Country Engagement and Support – 50%
Define country support for FAH’s overall strategy: Lead identification of potential client countries/ counties and assess readiness for FAH support, including refinement of criteria, conducting due diligence activities, and relationship initiation.
Refine the FAH service packages continuously in line with government needs, the prevailing shift in the ecosystem as well as FAH’s strategic focus.
Work directly with key health and finance leaders (MOH, MOF, etc) from existing and potential country clients to define a financing ‘pathway’ that can sustainably support their community health programs. He or she will also engage closely with NGOs and other development partners (UNICEF, World Bank, EU, USAID, etc) involved in supporting countries’ health programs.The Country Engagement and Support Lead is expected to take a leadership role in identifying potential client countries, assessing their core challenges and ‘readiness’ for FAH support (political will, partner engagement, etc) and determining the best model for FA supportDepending on the country context, the country’s engagement support may include efforts to develop/ refine costing figures, map existing resources, engage with international donors and the national MOF/Treasury, and country-specific Return-on-Investment cases and define a financing strategy overall. The Country Engagement and Support Lead will ‘own’ responsibility for all analysis and work product developed for governments and for building, maintaining, and strengthening relationships with key MOH staff
Maintain relationships with existing and previous FAH countries
Assess whether existing or new financing tools may be appropriate for various countries and how they might be optimally used or refined – with the country investment team and in close partnership with country governments– will Develop training materials based on in country capability needs, to upskill our government clients on health financing
Partnership management, advocacy, and Communication – 30%
Identify, cultivate, and formalize partnerships with strategic institutional partners (Funders, knowledge partners, private sector/ investment partners, collaborators, etc.)
Assist the FAH in relevant advocacy engagements that would further advance our work. E.g., Communities at the heart of UHC, steering committees, technical working groups, regional and global events
Documenting and sharing FAH’s country work, including developing publicly shareable versions of in-country work by codifying country experiences (with MOH client permission) and sharing this work in appropriate forums and FAH’s quarterly dashboards
Impact monitoring – 10%
Tracking and highlighting FAH impact: Have institutionalized methods of tracking and highlighting FAH impact internally (dashboards/ checklists, etc.) and externally (website/ articles/ knowledge pieces/ newsletter/ annual reports).
Define process indicators for country engagement and support workstream to demonstrate the impact of FAH support
People Development/Talent
Management – 10%
Lead on both country engagement and support teams in talent management: e.g., recruitment, performance management, and coaching and mentorship
Team capability building: Identify training needs and devise strategies to meet those needs. Develop an internal training calendar.
Oversee rewards and recognition in collaboration with the CEO to ensure the team is engaged and motivated
Refine the performance review templates and conduct performance reviews for the country engagement and support team
KEY RELATIONSHIPS
The Head of Country Programmes will be a member of the Executive Committee (ExCo), and report directly to the Chief Executive Officer. The incumbent will work closely with the Africa Frontline First (AFF) -Chief Operating Officer, Head of Strategy and Investments and Partnerships & Fundraising Manager. S/He will regularly collaborate closely with the program teams.
CANDIDATE SPECIFICATION: KEY SELECTION CRITERIA
The Financing Alliance for Health is seeking a highly skilled, multi-functional, and entrepreneurial leader with a passion for global health to serve as the Head of Country Programmes.
Key experience areas/competencies should include:
Financing for health: understanding the core bottlenecks behind health financing, the key steps (costing, investment cases, resource mapping, gap analysis), and potential options for financing (traditional donors, national resources, corporate and capital markets sources etc.). Have practical experience in health financing, particularly in results-based financing and risk pooling
Health systems: knowledge and practical work on health systems, and in particular primary/community health systems; experience working directly with/ embedment in ministries of health and finance (and other government agencies) as well as major donor organizations critical for this role.
Global mindset and experience: international experience across multiple developing countries, especially in Africa. Have a performance track record in leading country expansion into multiple regions of Africa
Leadership: practical experience in leading multi-functional, multi-cultural teams that are geographically spread
Proactive problem solver: you should also be a proactive-problem solver, flexible, effective at working independently, self-starter, and able to build your own work plan
Tool development: broad experiences creating and refining analytical tools and approaches e.g. excel models, ROIs, scorecards, curricula etc.
You should feel comfortable engaging across the spectrum of stakeholders, from ministries of finance and health (at the senior level) to NGO partners to members of the business and finance communities. You should also be an ‘out of the box’ thinker, comfortable with ambiguity, ready to fundraise and build the venture, and keen to work towards the broader mission of improving health outcomes and expanding access.
In terms of background, you should have an advanced degree in business management, finance, health, public sector or other relevant field and 10+ years of experience in healthcare, international development, management consulting, or another similar field.
You will be expected to have excellent oral and written presentation skills, strong computer skills, including MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel. You will also be expected to have full proficiency in English and French. Additional language skills are an added advantage.
You will be expected to travel 50+% of the time
Compensation
This position offers a competitive compensation package linked to the background and experience of the candidate.
Timing
Applications accepted on a rolling basis.
Application Requirements
Please submit a resume through the link: recruitment@financingalliance.org
To apply for this job please visit financingalliance.org.