Health Finance Advisor at Palladium Group

Project Overview and Role:

• Nigeria Integrated Health Program is an integrated health program with an expanded effort with the Government of Nigeria (GON) to identify and support rapid scale-up of proven interventions through improvement of service delivery and strengthening of health systems. It will focus its support for service delivery in six intervention areas: family planning, malaria, routine immunization, nutrition, maternal/newborn health, and treatment of childhood pneumonia/diarrhea. It has a strong emphasis on monitoring, evaluation and learning.   
• This program will work closely with state-level government officials to support established state-level Health and Development Plans, build capacity, and promote ownership of interventions, systems, and results. Specific interventions will need to be tailored to local contexts and will be fully developed at state and Local Government Area (LGA) levels. Through agreements with individual states, its potential breadth is the entire country with an emphasis on the north.    

 Primary Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Provides health financing expertise/technical assistance to State activities of the project, working with other technical staff and state government institutions as per project requirements.
• Analyses the economic and financing implications of enhanced access and improved quality of primary healthcare services
• Provides guidance to state level MOHs regarding budgeting for service delivery activities and HRH planning  
  Coordinates closely with the Senior Health Financing Advisor and other project technical staff to introduce new payment methods and manage health financing and economics related activities 
• Provides analytical and evaluative techniques to identify, consider, and resolve health financing policy issues or problems. 
• Uses various quantitative and qualitative techniques to perform financing and policy analysis tasks.
• Is responsible for the development of activity-specific work plans and budgets.  
  Participates in and prepares necessary technical and program-related reports, including presentations and white papers.
• Guides and supports research, data collection, policy formulation, training and capacity building efforts in support of project activities and deliverables.
• Ensures quality of services and compliance per project/program requirements.
• Organizes as needed project/program trainings, conferences, workshops, and meetings. 
• Interacts with internal and external resources and other experts to bring new and “cutting edge” ideas into approaches.
• Prepares health financing analyses, recommendations, briefing notes, and assessments for internal and client use.
• Represent IHP at health financing meetings/events and actively participate in the state health financing Technical Working Group and other relevant technical committees. 
• Documents health financing success stories/lessons learned and produce publishable health financing materials including policy briefs and peer-reviewed articles. 
• Represents the projects, company, and programs in the health financing area in Nigerian and regional forums, as necessary. 
• Performs other related duties and responsibilities as assigned.  

Hours of Work: 40 hours per week  

Reporting: The Employee shall report to State IHP Director, Ebonyi  

 Required Qualifications:

• Advanced degree (MA, MSc, PhD) in economics or health economics with academic specialization in health financing or commensurate work experience in health finance
• At least 5 years of health finance experience in Nigeria
• Sound knowledge in State/Kebbi/Sokoto’s governance and health finance landscape
• Sound knowledge of methodologies used in health finance research, economic analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, quantitative analysis, and statistical/econometric analysis
• Knowledge of relevant literature related to topic area
• Demonstrated problem solving, analytic, financial, and evaluative skills
• Attention to detail and ability to effectively and efficiently perform multiple tasks and balance competing priorities often within a required timeframe 
• Professional and mature demeanor and conduct
• Ability to respond and adapt quickly to changing requirements and competing demands
• Appropriate software skills necessary to conduct research, and to conduct analysis of study data, such as STATA, SPSS, or equivalent
• Strong written and oral communication skills for high-level policy audiences (writing examples may be required) 
• Fluency in English required, and local languages preferred