Senior Adviser Health, PHC - HSS (P5) at UNICEF

How can you make a difference?

Overall technical leadership on Primary Health Care and Health systems strengthening and coordinate the PHC-HSS Unit's work on planning, service delivery, equity and UHC

• Be the technical lead for UNICEF to advance Health team’s leadership and advocacy efforts in Primary Health Care and Health Systems Strengthening, to build resilient health delivery systems for integrated essential public health functions that assures Universal Health Coverage with a focus on the most deprived and supports countries achieve SDG3.
• Coordinates and manages the PHC-HSS Unit's work on equity-focused, evidence-based planning to ensure quality universal health coverage (UHC) through PHC strengthening for key reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) interventions, using EQUIST, PHC oriented Implementation Research and PHC Operational framework, PHC measurement framework and indicators and other relevant tools and methods. Ensure that the priorities and strategies laid out in the UNICEF Strategy for Health 2016-2030 and the UNICEF Strategic Plan are pursued.
• Provides guidance and technical input on the methodologies applied. Conceives strategies on the further technical refinement and use of these methodologies. including PHCPI and EQUIST, oversees the realisation of these ideas, and ensures that their implementation is contextualized. Promotes the scale up of national and sub-national equity-focused, evidence-based RMNCAH programme management and monitoring, especially in high maternal and child mortality and morbidity-burden countries.
• Provides technical and methodological leadership and ensures quality in the development, costing and budgeting of investment cases for strengthening Primary Health Care, RMNCAH, especially promoting rights-based and pro-poor approaches through partnership with  major investors (World Bank, GFF, GAVI, Global fund, Pandemic Fund etc.).
• Lead the PHC-HSS Unit on behalf of UNICEF, in its engagement with the Global Financing Facility, the Global Fund and GAVI on various efforts for accelerating support to Primary Health Care and Resilient and Sustainable Systems for Health.

Documentation and research

• Lead and oversee the documentation and reporting on UNICEF's equity-focused, evidence-based approach to quality UHC for achieving SDGs through PHC strengthening and PHC oriented Implementation research for children and women, particularly the role of UNICEF Health team-led strategies and approaches.
• Contributes to implementation research that aims to generate evidence on and identify local solutions to reduce bottlenecks for taking MNCAH to scale.
• Ensures high standards of policy and research work on equity, including through the publishing of papers and overseeing information dissemination.

UNICEF Regional and Country Office Support

• Interpretation and roll-out of the UNICEF Strategy for Health 2016-2030 and accompanying HSS Approach at Regional and Country Office level. Focuses particularly on the development, costing, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of equity-focused, evidence-based national and sub-national health policies and programs that aim for UHC of quality RMNCAH services.
• Coordinate support to UNICEF Regional and Country Offices to provide policy guidance and support to and ensures quality in the formulation of national and sub-national health strategies, management approaches and monitoring. The objective is to promote country-level acceleration and scale-up of equity-focused, evidence-based child survival and maternal health interventions, including within the framework of UNICEF's involvement in global initiatives.

Partnership and Representation

• Lead jointly with WHO the PHC-Accelerator secretariat for the SDG3-GAP (of 13 agencies) efforts to engage, align, accelerate and account on country level support for implementation of Primary Health Care strategies and collaborate with focal points of other global health organizations leading on Sustainable Financing for Health (SFH), Data and digital health (DDH), Fragile Contexts and Vulnerable populations (FCV), R&D Innovations and Access Accelerators.
•  Collaborates with governments, SDG GAP, H6 and bilateral partners, foundations and other partners on the development, testing and validation of approaches and methods that facilitate the identification of bottlenecks and solutions for the achievement of quality UHC.
• Prepares for and represents UNICEF in meetings and policy fora on the promotion of equity and use of evidence in RMNCAH planning and priority-setting for UHC.

Fund-raising and Management

• Supports the mobilization and use of financial resources for these duties, as well as issues related to human resources and contracts required for the attainment of the Unit's objectives.
• Leads required inputs to the development and annual review of the Section's work plan in the above areas of focus.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Public Health, Medicine or Social Sciences is required.
• A minimum of 10 (ten) years relevant professional work experience in a senior capacity at national and international levels in health programme or related programmes is required.
• Supervision skills will be an asset.
• Diverse field programme experiences an asset.
• Prior experience working in low- and middle-income country context with experience in policy, programme design and implementation.
• Experience working in the UN system is an asset.
• Fluency in English (written and verbal) is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, or Spanish) is an asset.