Senior Program Analyst at ThinkWell

Overview

The Senior Program Analyst provides technical assistance, analytical and operational support across a range of ThinkWell in-country public or private sector projects. The Senior Analyst brings strong quantitative skills and research capacity (typically in health economics and financing) as well as a solid understanding of the design, implementation, and evaluation of health financing policy reform. The Senior Program Analyst may supervise staff but typically serves as an individual contributor on a project team.

In Kenya, the Senior Program analyst plays a key role in implementing the Service Delivery Redesign (SDR) project in Kakamega County, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Service delivery redesign (SDR) for maternal and newborn services is a vision for transforming health systems to focus on providing high quality care by ensuring that all women deliver at health facilities that offer emergency services. ThinkWell in partnership with Jacaranda Health will support the County Government of Kakamega to strengthen the health financing function to support the SDR implementation.

The SDR project will collaborate and leverage on learnings from the flagship project, Strategic Purchasing for Primary health Care project (SP4PHC). The SP4PHC Kenya team works in four counties (Kilifi, Isiolo, Makueni and Kakamega). The Senior Program Analyst is based in Kakamega and works closely with the Kakamega County Department of Health, Jacaranda Health, ADP and other partners and the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF), providing technical advisory services to the county and navigating county partnerships in support of the project objectives. The Sr. Analyst reports to the Technical Advisor, Health Care Financing.

responsibilities

Project Analysis and Implementation

• Lead an analysis of the health financing and purchasing landscape in Kakamega county to inform reforms needed to support SDR implementation.
• Support Kakamega County to optimize different funding streams, including Linda Mama, EduAfya and other schemes, to increase fiscal space to purchase MNCH services.
• Support the County Government in conducting NHIF performance evaluation at facility and county level- tracking NHIF claims submission and reimbursement.
• Provide technical support to the County department to apply strategic purchasing principles to incentivize providers to improve the quality of care, with a focus on RMNCH services and SDR.
• Support the County Department of Health to undertake the necessary health financing reforms to best support and sustain SDR implementation.
• Establish working relationships with the Kakamega NHIF local branch and facilitate close working relationship of the office with the County Department of health.

• Support the Kakamega CDoH to review or develop and implement PFM procedures and legislation to address PFM challenges that hinder facilities from generating and using funds to improve the quality of RMNCH services.
• Provide technical support to the CDoH to better leverage funds from the THS-UCP project and the UHC initiative to support SDR.
• Use the learnings and emerging evidence to co-create together with the Kakamega CDOH, Jacaranda Health and other stakeholders an investment case for SDR.
• Support the development of annual work plans, with a focus on MNCH and FP across different levels; facilities, sub-counties and county.

Reporting, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)

• For the landscape analysis, develop data collection tools, lead data collection activities, and develop the landscaping report.
• Develop and disseminate learning products on health financing and strategic purchasing reforms for SDR to inform planning, policy and scale-up (e.g., policy and technical briefs, blogs, etc.)
• Produce and disseminate high quality reports and related documents as necessary.
• Represent ThinkWell in meetings with external partners, County Government and other stakeholders.

Planning

• Work with the County Government to support the process of planning and budgeting with a focus on MNCH and FP services during the annual work-planning cycle,
• Support the inclusion of output-based payments (including but not limited to those based on NHIF income) into county planning.