Job Opportunities at Maisha Meds

About the Role

We believe that strategic engagement with policy leaders is critical to fulfilling our mission to improve access to affordable, high-quality, and appropriate medicines at scale. We recently secured Stage 2 funding from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to test a more transparent and accountable model of delivery of global health funding. This model enables point of care reimbursement for essential health products via mobile money, which has the potential to transform fundamentals of health financing in low- and middle-income countries. We are looking for an individual with extensive experience working with key national and global health decision-makers to help us engage and iterate with them on our value proposition. The ideal candidate will:

• Deeply understand the perspectives, incentives, constraints, and synergies across the health policy landscape
• Align and communicate the value of Maisha Meds with the objectives of decision-makers and funders at a national and global level
• Position Maisha Meds as a thought leader and trusted expert in improving access to affordable, high-quality, and appropriate medicines
• Inform policies that draw from our lessons learned that will help make Maisha Meds model ubiquitous across sub-Saharan Africa

We are looking for a strategic and focused leader with experience engaging in-country bodies like the Country Coordinating Mechanism and Council of Governors, as well as global decision-makers in Geneva, Washington DC, and Seattle. In this role, the VP Market Access will lead Maisha Meds policy efforts in Kenya and across the region.  Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, you will:

Lead policy strategy and execution for Maisha Meds: With support from our CEO and experts across the organization, you will establish policy targets and objectives aligned with our scale pathway, and oversee all activities relating to achieving those policy targets. Our VP Market Access will:

• Work closely with leaders across the organization to develop our policy strategy and refine it over time
• Set policy targets, define policy OKRs, and ensure these are aligned with our long-term vision for scale and sustainability
• Manage all activities relating to achieving policy objectives and targets
• Motivate our team to align their work streams in support of policy targets and objectives

Drive funding commitments for point-of-care subsidies from national, regional, and global decision-makers: You will identify and cultivate relationships with key stakeholders and serve as the primary relationship manager for these partners. You will:

• Conduct need-finding and identify pain points among key in-country, regional, and global policy leaders
• Synthesize lessons learned and research outcomes from Maisha Meds, and work with policy leaders to translate these research findings into innovative, data-driven programs
• Secure funding agreements to implement point-of-care subsidy models in Kenya and elsewhere
• Develop systems for ongoing management of these relationships, and direct our team how to most effectively engage as needed

Lead engagement with policymakers and advisers: You will manage ongoing engagement with potential public sector users of the system, ensure national-level familiarity with our system, and engage regularly with our recently-assembled board of world class policy experts. You will:

• Facilitate regular policy meetings with policy advisory board to address strategic and tactical questions to advance our policy goals
• Present to and engage relevant technical working groups and regulators throughout the region to secure relevant approvals
• Lead public sector adoption of our system, from two counties currently using it to the 45 others that may be interested
• Ensure all relevant national stakeholders are aware and briefed on our value proposition and support data systems integration and data security and compliance approvals

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional health policy experts with 6+ years of policy experience working within and engaging with African health systems. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strategic leader with a track record of successfully building relationships to find common ground, build consensus, and strengthen collaboration among diverse stakeholder groups and achieve high-level policy objectives
• Experience working with in-country coordinating mechanisms, national health insurance, and global health funders in Geneva, Seattle, and DC
• Experience developing relationships with senior government officials, leaders of development agencies, and private sector representatives
• Humility and personal stability. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service
• Collaborative team player who can engage leaders across the organization to meet strategic objectives
• Ability to identify opportunities or resources and motivate relevant team members to pursue them
• Conversant in the language of both business and government policy
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
• Swahili language skills

We would prefer to have you based in Nairobi, but would be open to a part-time remote position for the right person.

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About the Role

We believe that exceptional service delivery, real-time learning, and an iterative feedback loop are core to building game-changing healthcare programs at scale. We recently secured Stage 2 funding from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Grand Challenges Canada to test a more transparent and accountable model of delivery of global health funding. This model enables point of care reimbursement for essential health products via mobile money, which has the potential to transform the fundamentals of health financing in low- and middle-income countries. We are looking for a strong leader and analytical thinker to help us build this into a flagship program demonstrating the potential of data-driven healthcare delivery for the bottom of the pyramid. The ideal candidate will:

• Be excited to grow our network of pharmacies reimbursing for care from 10 to 200+, including building operations, supply chain and training systems required to achieve this
• Work with clinical advisors to develop clinical protocols to ensure pharmacies and clinics provide high-quality care
• Engage with our tech team to build a scalable reimbursement product that has the potential to impact the lives of millions of people
• Be keen to help drive debates around how to structure reimbursement to improve quality of care and expand access in rural areas, with a focus on ensuring medication adherence and incentivizing use of diagnostic tests and WHO prequalified medication
• Be interested in working with our health economics research partners to test ideas at a small scale before rolling them out across our network

The ideal candidate will be comfortable with ambiguity, able to respond quickly to changing conditions, and excited that we could be growing the program over the next year from two service lines that we support now (contraceptives and malaria care) to potentially 5-6 (with HIV ARVs, antenatal and postnatal care, and non-communicable disease care in the pipeline).  In this role, the Director of Programs will lead Maisha Meds program development in Kenya and across the region.  Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, you will:

Develop and lead operations for our core reimbursement programs: With support from our COO and other leadership, you will develop our operations systems for scaling our reimbursement product, structuring onboarding and training programs, ensuring compliance with regulation and clinical best-practice, and ensure that we are gathering learnings and feedback from sites to help us improve our programs. Our Director of Programs will:

• Build the team to support a network of healthcare providers for our reimbursement systems
• Set KPIs and structure work plans to ensure we hit targets and with strong execution
• Manage all activities relating to achieving scale and service delivery objectives and targets
• Motivate our team to align their work streams in support of operational targets and objectives

Lead development of our reimbursement systems: You will develop clinical pathways and protocols; help us structure small-scale pilots and learning activities to help set reimbursement rates and copayments; and help us identify further priority products and expansion plans for new geographies.  You will:

• Oversee clinical protocol development for all new programs that we may support (HIV, diabetes, hypertension, antenatal care, and possibly cervical cancer self-swabs) and refine existing protocols to ensure high quality of care
• Conduct small-scale operational research to decide how to structure subsidies to ensure med adherence and affordability of high-value products with low adoption rates currently
• Help us to develop and prioritize the pipeline of potential future programs, expansion geographies, and partnerships for patient engagement and acquisition

Lead engagement with our tech team to support product development and iteration: You will work directly with a team of software engineers to ensure that we are building world-class tech, with a focus on user experience, A/B testing for copayments and messaging, and patient identification / fraud mitigation.  You will:

• Develop a feedback loop to the tech team for refining and expanding our tech product
• Help us build a proof of concept for A/B testing, with a focus on setting copayment based on patient demographics and ability to pay for care
• Evaluate technical integrations with potential partnerships, develop low fidelity ways of testing partnerships before engaging the tech team

Qualifications

We are seeking someone with a mix of operational and clinical experience who has worked in and engaged with African health systems. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strategic leader and strong project manager with a track record of building and managing successful teams, including experience with complex field operations
• Experience building clinical protocols, training programs, or similar systems
• Growth mindset and enthusiasm for learning, feedback and continuous improvement
• Humility and personal stability. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service
• Collaborative team player who can engage leaders across the organization to meet strategic objectives
• Experience managing team performance, including recruiting future leaders and developing them to achieve their potential
• Ability to roll up one’s sleeves and directly move projects forward
• Strong data skills; advanced Excel a plus
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Swahili language skills

We would prefer to have you based in Nairobi, with regular travel to our main office in Kisumu

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What We’re Looking For

Our next campaign will be a vouchers program to subsidize malaria medication for patients. We need tools to scale the program to hundreds of pharmacies.

We’re looking for an engineer to collaborate with our tech team, lead development for the vouchers program, and help with building features on our flagship point-of-sale tool.

The ideal candidate has:

• 4+ years of building quality applications,
• A history of writing clean and well-documented code with automated tests,
• Experience integrating with REST APIs,
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work well with a culturally diverse team (we’re a mix of Kenyans and international team members), and
• Experience building apps for environments with limited or intermittent Internet connectivity is a plus.

Our preferred technology:

• Kotlin
• RxJava
• Dagger
• Mockito

Our company is based in Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and we would love to have you join us on-site (but most of our tech team is remote, and we’d certainly be open to remote work for the right candidate).

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About the Role

The role has three primary responsibilities:

Systems design and development: Working directly with the COO, you will integrate new models and programs into the operations team to improve operational efficiency. Possible work streams include:

• Directly mapping out and developing new operations systems, with an eye towards usability and simplicity while generating robust data to support existing program improvements
• Supporting training and iteration on new systems, thus setting them up for success
• Conducting research, testing and incorporating new tech solutions that can further streamline attaining key performance indicators by the operations team

Small-scale operational R&D and field trials: Design small scale trials to test new models, analyze trial data, and report findings to evaluate whether to roll out models across Maisha Meds network. These may include:

• Gathering information and conducting needfinding for ideas that can improve impact, scale, or operational efficiency
• Running small-scale tests to evaluate new operational ideas and synthesizing the results through memos and presentations
• Working with the wider operations team to incorporate successful trials into overall programs at scale

Performance management and communication/coordination across operations teams: You will work directly with the COO to design ways to assess the performance of team members and programs. This could include:

• Building systems to organically assess performance of individual team members
• Conducting research on best-practices for performance management and how to incorporate into compensation and communications structures for the team
• Working with the COO to develop communications materials, agendas, and intervals and ensure stellar communication across all teams related to what is working or not

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional professionals with 1-4+ years of work experience. We are looking for candidates that will help take our organization to the next level of impact and scale. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• 1+ years of experience building operational systems and/or testing out digital solutions to be used to improve operational efficiency
• Growth mindset and enthusiasm for learning, feedback and continuous improvement
• Humility and personal stability. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service
• Collaborative team player who can engage teams across the organization to meet strategic objectives
• Ability to roll up one’s sleeves and directly move projects forward
• Strong data skills; strong Excel skills a plus
• Top performing undergraduate background
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• East African national

We would prefer to have you based in Nairobi, with regular travel to our main office in Kisumu