United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Global Health Adviser

Job Title: Global Health Adviser

Country: Ireland/UK

Location: Dublin/London

Duration: 24 months

Start Date: 1^st July 2016

Reports to: Deputy Health Director, Programmes

General Description of the Programme

GOAL is an international humanitarian organisation founded in 1977. GOAL’s programmes are aimed at assisting the most vulnerable in communities and providing immediate support to those affected by war or natural disaster. GOAL is an organisation with an approximate annual budget of €300m of which approximately 30 % is expended in health, which is a core sector for GOAL.

GOAL has recently invested significantly in an expanded Health Team, which includes:

Advisory Team – Technical experts divided into health, nutrition and WASH teams that are the established focal points for Country Programmes providing access to a full range of technical advice and support to delivery and a gateway to other services.

Emergency Medical Team – A team of medics, logisticians and response Team Leaders able to mount a rapid primary or secondary medical response in emergencies. The EMT has its own medical stock and logistics supplies and is capable of starting operations and self-sustaining for rapid first phase response

Health Policy and Innovation – A team of health and MEAL experts ensuring coherent health policy, establishing the frameworks for health programming, clarifying the ethics of intervention and actively engaging with sector innovation

GOAL’s health strategy has adopted a systems approach to programming and focuses on strengthening health systems and attendant behaviour change wherever possible and direct provision of services where necessary. GOAL will seek to work with the relevant health authorities whenever appropriate and will actively build partnerships and search for innovative solutions.

Overview of the role

The incumbent will ensure that GOAL develops and delivers on an ambitious agenda of growth in high quality health programming. The incumbent will lead a team of experts providing advice, support and (where necessary) direct intervention across a wide range of programming in contexts of emergency response, chronic humanitarian need and long-term development.

The post-holder will also work to develop key relationships with donors, peer INGOs, UN agencies, delivery partners and host governments. They are expected to maintain excellent working relationships across the Health Team and within GOAL.

Objectives:

To lead on health strategy development, dissemination and adherence, ensuring quality and coherence of programming

To support delivery of health programming through:

• Provision of technical guidance, advice and monitoring


• Deployment of staff


• Development of protocols and methodologies

To ensure the development and growth of GOAL’s health portfolio and beneficiary reach through high quality, effective and timely health programming

Main responsibilities

Strategy, Policy and innovation

• To lead on the design, development and writing of the GOAL health strategy


• To ensure GOAL health related proposals adhere to agreed strategy


• To identify opportunities for research and innovation derived from programming


• To identify particular issues for advocacy


• To provide technical support on health issues to country programmes the Operations team and the wider organisation as required.


• Participate in health research and analysis with a particular focus on Community Health –ensure that such research and methodologies are disseminated within the organisation.


• To represent GOAL at strategic technical meetings


• Work with the Policy and Innovation team to document GOAL best practise in health and to publish and or disseminate research documents


• Assist in developing appropriate health monitoring tools and ensuing that those which are in place are being used appropriately and are sufficiently robust to assist in programme review.


• Assist in monitoring international best practise, innovation and external research and disseminating appropriate research and tools within the organisation.

Delivery and monitoring

• Assist in ensuring GOAL health interventions are at a scope, scale and reach appropriate to needs and in line with available resources


• To manage a team of health experts and coordinate the provision of high quality technical advice and support to Country Office health programming and emergency medical responses


• To provide high quality technical advice and support in a timely fashion


• To assist in the development of methodologies, guidelines, procedures and tools for health programme design and delivery


• To ensure that bottlenecks, gaps and challenges of delivery are identified and receive appropriate attention and support as resources allow


• To identify needs and priorities for health staff field deployment


• To undertake monitoring field visits


• To deploy to the field as necessary in emergency responses


• Work closely with GOALs MEAL department to ensure that the health component of GOALs programme are using GOALs MEAL tools appropriately and that MEAL training and capacity building is being provided as required.


• To support MEAL processes within GOAL health programming and work closely with the Policy and MEAL Teams to ensure we have accurate data and analysis


• To work with the Policy and Innovation team to support / undertake periodic internal evaluations of country health programmes

Development

• To assist in donor proposal development as required


• To actively seek out new sources of health funding to further develop GOAL’s health portfolio and beneficiary reach


• To ensure that all GOAL health related proposals and reports receive appropriate technical review


• To ensure programme design is as integrated as possible – ensuring that technical sectors adopt as streamlined approach as possible


• Ensure that GOAL programmes are designed to work with MoH structures at local and national level to support health system reforms.


• To ensure that cross-cutting issues, such as gender and protection, are incorporated into health activities and is are key components of health staff training and development.


• Assist GOAL country programmes in developing community health approaches which are based on behaviour change/barrier analysis methodologies and which seek to address the underlying causes of poor health outcomes for communities.

Other

• Participate in recruitment and professional development of GOAL health staff as required.


• Advise HR on selection and shortlisting of health candidates and participate in technical briefings of newly recruited health staff as required.


• Participate in staff reviews for senior health staff and advice HR on training needs requirements or retention initiatives for health staff.


• To deputise for the Dep. Health Dir. Programmes as required

Requirements (Person Specification)

Essential

• Minimum 5 years international field experience in health.


• Masters Degree in Public Health or a related subject with some background in health systems strengthening.


• Experience of working at a senior management level in an international NGO or similar organisation


• Experience of working in insecure environments / fragile states


• Sound understanding of a systems approach in health programming


• Excellent knowledge of developing donor proposals and reports with various donors and understanding of the log-frame or results framework.


• Excellent communication and presentation skills


• Experience of conducting health research, data analysis and documentation of best practise


• Ability to make links between WASH, HIV/AIDS, and nutrition within the broader context of an integrated public health approach.


• The ability to liaise and effectively coordinate with government, local NGOs and community initiatives.

Desirable

• Knowledge of a second language (such as French, Spanish or Arabic).


• Specific experience of taking the lead in proposal and programme development for large-scale long-term health/development donors – e.g. USAID, World Bank, EU


• Experience of behaviour change methodologies/barrier analysis for community health.


• Experience in urban health programming also an advantage.


• Previous published work in the field of public health

GOAL has Standards of Integrity and a Child Protection Policy, which have been developed to ensure the maximum protection of programme participants and children from exploitation. GOAL also has a confidentiality policy ensuring the non-disclosure of any information whatsoever relating to the practices and business of GOAL, acquired in the course of duty, to any other person or organisation without authority, except in the normal execution of duty. Any candidate offered a job with GOAL will be expected to adhere to these policies any job offer made is also subject to police clearance. GOAL is an equal opportunities employer.

This Job Description only serves as a guide for the position available. GOAL reserves the right to change this document. Any published closing dates are estimated. Due to the nature of GOAL’s work we aim to fill vacancies as quickly as possible. This means that we will close adverts as soon as we have found the right candidate and this may be before the published closing date. We would therefore advise interested applicants to submit an application as early as possible.