Senior Program Officer, Child Health - Nigeria

Tags: Global Health Environment
  • Added Date: Thursday, 13 March 2025
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The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, weโ€™re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The TeamThe Global Development Program includes a diverse range of program areas aimed at finding creative ways to ensure solutions and products get into the hands of people in low-income countries who need them most. We focus on areas with the potential for high-impact, sustainable solutions that can reach millions of people. Our program strategies include Emergency Response; Family Planning; Maternal Newborn & Child Health; Nutrition; and Polio Eradication. A common theme across these programs focuses on innovative delivery, emphasizing strengthening primary health care systems. The Global Development Program also encompasses our India Country Office and Africa Team, with physical offices in Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Senegal, Kenya, and Abuja. Our Program Strategy Teams work closely with these Country Office Teams to align the foundationโ€™s health and development equity agenda with the governmentโ€™s broader priorities.

Application Deadline: 17/9/2024

Your Role

The Senior Program Officer, Child Health's primary purpose is to conceive, develop, and lead a complex portfolio of grants and technical assistance at national and sub-national levels to improve child health outcomes in Nigeria. This will be done specifically by supporting the โ€œResiliency through Azithromycin for Childrenโ€ (REACH) program, which is in alignment with the foundationโ€™s REACH strategy. The SPO will partner with teams across several divisions of the foundation, to deliver a โ€œcoordinatedโ€ one-foundation approach to ensure an accelerated scale-up of REACH and optimal impact on health challenges on the continent. The SPO will work closely with governments, the private sector, and civil society partners to catalyze these efforts. The focus of the foundationโ€™s work will involve the development, testing, and scale-up of high-impact and cost-effective solutions in selected areas to drive results and influence scale nationally in Nigeria.

This role reports to the Deputy Director of Health Systems, Africa and the position will be based in Abuja, Nigeria.


What You'll Do

  • Co-develop strategies and implementation plans that will lead to accelerated scale-up of REACH and improvements in child survival in Nigeria.

  • Oversee detailed targeting and micro-planning, interpreting data to localize the scale-up strategy, partnering closely with government and other collaborators

  • Identify, negotiate, implement, and monitor complex, performance-based contracts/grants to accelerate the increase in child health outcomes. Specifically, this position will identify activities to support the adoption of innovations/interventions into clinical practice. This includes landscaping and identifying appropriate partners, undertaking operational research, macro- and micro-planning, training in workflow, surveillance, and monitoring the overall execution of investments.

  • Manage partnerships and grantee relationships to ensure learning and impact, for example, by conducting site visits, convening meetings of key collaborators, supervising and evaluating components of grants.

  • Work closely with the Nigerian federal and state governments and implementing agencies to develop operational research and implementation frameworks for new and emerging interventions for child survival, such as periodic azithromycin distribution to reduce child mortality in high-mortality settings

  • Manage grants and stakeholder relationships at the country level to support early rollout of such strategies including the development of a local evidence base for appropriate policy development and scale-up.

  • Serve as a senior technical resource on new and emerging interventions for child health, connecting international research and scientific expertise with national child survival and mortality reduction policy and priorities

  • Liaise with Seattle-based research and product development teams to ensure research and product development strategies within Nigeria are tailored to the local context.

  • Engage a broad range of collaborators and decision-makers working on the delivery of clinical services for child survival, either in primary health clinical care settings or through mass delivery platforms such as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), supplementary immunization activities (SIAs), Child Health Weeks, etc. Within this coalition, work collectively to see opportunities to optimize clinical services at the โ€œlast mileโ€, with an emphasis on making such services more accessible, effective, cost-effective, of higher quality, and client-centered. Support testing and evaluation of such opportunities through grants, contracts, and technical collaboration.

  • Facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration of partners across states and countries.

  • Contribute to writing background documents, briefs, articles, and presentations, including relevant literature reviews, landscape, and data analyses; organize and prepare for high-level foundation leadership trips.

  • Any other activities to support the foundationโ€™s strategy on REACH

  • Represent the foundation to key selected government health leaders, platforms, and working groups on REACH at state, national, and regional levels โ€“ this would include delving into issues from the policy level to the facility and community (i.e. demand generation) levels. Potentially taking ownership for coordinating all foundation health and development activities in one or more states.

  • Play a liaison and advisory role with different Seattle-based Global Health, Gender Equality, and Global Development teams, the Nigeria County Office, and the Africa Regional Office on investments aimed to optimize equitable coverage, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for specific clinical services and tools.

  • Collaborate with foundation colleagues in related program areas to take advantage of cross-sector grant-making opportunities.


    Your Experience

    The foundation is seeking an expert in public health service delivery management in African settings.

    The ideal candidate should have:

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