Senior Health Economics Researchers

Ghana.

Promoting Results and Outcomes through Policy and Economic Levers (PROPEL) Health is a USAID-funded five-year project awarded to Palladium on September 23, 2022. PROPEL Health aims to improve the enabling environment for equitable and sustainable health services, supplies, and delivery systems through policy development and implementation; adequate, predictable, and sustainable health financing; enhanced government stewardship, transparency, and accountability; and use of evidence-based advocacy approaches at global, national, and subnational levels to promote best practices. It focuses on family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH), primary healthcare, and the integration of FP/RH with HIV and maternal and child health (MCH). The project’s transformational technical strategy prioritizes localizing policy, advocacy, financing, governance, leadership, technical assistance, and capacity development to enhance resilience and sustainability.
PROPEL Health Ghana is serve as the technical and implementation driving force for local Mission’s buy-ins and country-based core-funded activities. The project actively supports USAID’s localization strategy by drawing on local actors and partners to co-create country programs and lead implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
PROPEL Health Ghana activities focusses on the following broad results areas:

– Support and strengthen Ghana Health Services and stakeholders to develop and execute a new FP Costed Implementation Plan (CIP) to improve FP services, supplies, and information.
– Support GHS, NHIS, and the broader FP community to mobilize domestic resources and review performance of the NHIS FP benefits to strengthen FP self-reliance

– Catalyze and strengthen youth-CSO capacity for engagement in Ghana’s budget processes.
– GHS public financial management (PFM) capacity strengthening including expansion of the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) to all divisions, departments, and facilities nationwide.

Background
Globally, among the 1.9 billion women of the reproductive age group (15-49 years) in 2019, 1.1 billion required family planning (FP); of these, 842 million were using contraceptive methods, and 270 million had an unmet need for contraception. Many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) including Ghana have been challenged with limited fiscal space and policy options to improve the availability, accessibility, accountability, affordability, and reliability of quality FP/Reproductive Health (RH).  In LMICs contexts including Ghana where there exist national health financing systems such as a national health insurance scheme, there is often a failure to integrate the financing of FP services, supplies and information into such existing systems such as national health insurance programs, depending heavily on external donor funding for such services.  However, a sustainable, resilient, and context-responsive health financing system requires service integration to ensure equitable access to critical healthcare including FP.
General Aim: This project seeks to undertake Operational Research on NHIS FP benefit package and make recommendations for improvement.
Methodology: A concurrent mixed methods study design approach will be used to provide both quantitative and qualitative insight. This involves a separate collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data.
Expected Outcome: This study seeks to advance FP goals and targets in Ghana by creating an enabling environment that fosters sustainable service delivery (public and private users and providers) and addressing both supply and demand side factors that influence FP services uptake as well as estimate the cost of providing FP services under the NHIS benefit package.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities: 

1. The research consultants are expected to undertake the following operational research on behalf of the Ghana
2. National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and Ghana health services in consultation with the PROPEL Health technical team:
3. Undertake a Knowledge, Awareness, and Behavior/Practice (KABP) of the NHIS FP package with a focus on the demand and supply side actors,
4. Assess healthcare providers’ capacity to deliver the NHIS FP benefit package, and
5. Conduct a cost analysis of NHIS FP services and commodities.

Deliverables
This Consultancy is a milestone deliverable payment. Each consultant will be responsible for one set of deliverables as listed. The maximum level of effort per consultant is 32 days amounting to 96 days for accomplishing all the deliverables. The expected deliverables include the following:

Consultancy Team
The project will be managed by a multidisciplinary team including PROPEL Health, NHIA and GHS technical staff.

 Required Qualifications:

• Master’s or PhD Degree in health economics, economics, data science, statistics, or related discipline,
• At least 6 years of professional experience in public health, health economics, health finance, and policy formulation related to developing countries, or experience in other fields related to the duties described above.
• Experience developing similar Research Protocols/Operational Research on FP and NHIS for the NHIA and
• Ghana Health Service is critical.
• At least 3 peer reviewed publications on the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
• Experience in conducting large-scale national surveys.
• Experience working with government stakeholders including the Ministry of Health.
• Strong program management and interpersonal skills are highly desirable.
• Excellent writing, presentation, and organizational skills are required.
• Demonstrated problem solving, analytic, financial, and evaluative skills.
• Professional proficiency in any of the popular statistical tools including STATA and R.
• Meticulous and ability to perform multiple tasks and balance competing priorities effectively and efficiently often within a required timeframe.
• Professional and mature demeanor and conduct
• Ability to respond and adapt quickly to changing requirements and competing demands.
• Ability to take initiative and/or respond independently to situations.
• Fluency English required.
  

Other Desirable Skills: Initiative, strong conceptual abilities, sound judgment
Disclaimer: This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skill, effort, duties, and responsibilities associated with the position.

This job ad will be unpublished on 14/12/2024.

This job is posted by The Palladium Group.

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