United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Technical Advisor, Health and Disability Research (Maternity Cover)

Job Description

Job Title: Technical Advisor – Health and Disability Research (Maternity Cover)

Job Location: Haywards Heath

Reports to: Director of SPIDER

Responsible for:

Line management:

Research Officer: Evidence Synthesis;
Senior Regional Research Advisor;
External Research consultants.
Department: Research team within Strategic Programmes Development, Innovations Evaluations and Research (SPIDER) department

Start date & duration: Ideally from mid/ late August for 12 months.

Job Purpose:

To provide technical expertise and management of the eye health and disability research portfolio. To contribute to the sharing of lessons from Sightsavers programmes in order to improve the programmes, contribute to the delivery of the thematic strategies in Eye Health, Education and Social Inclusion and contribute to the understanding of best practices in the wider eye health and disability communities.

Principal Accountabilities:

To manage and provide technical expertise to Sightsavers’ eye health and disability research portfolio, including leading on specific epidemiological, health system and disability research.
To work with Global Technical Leads (GTLs) and Country and Regional offices in identifying operational research questions and designing integrated and/or standalone research to address global knowledge gap and our programmatic challenges.
To provide technical advice to developing research proposals and protocols, including expertise to study design, implementation, analysis and dissemination; liaise with fundraising teams to identify and submit research funding applications.

To contribute to evidence synthesis projects including systematic and comprehensive literature reviews and evidence gap maps.

To liaise with international and national research organisations in order to strengthen our research networks and share our evidence and learning To line manage relevant research posts, including the Research Officer for Evidence Synthesis; the Senior Regional Research Advisor; and external Research consultants where applicable.
To lead on/ contribute to effective dissemination of research evidence through peer-reviewed publications and international scientific fora;

Support and contribute to SPIDER, PS2 and wider organisational meetings and initiatives.

The principle accountabilities are not meant to be an exhaustive list of tasks. The need for flexibility is required and the job holder is expected to carry out any other related duties that are within the employee’s skills and abilities whenever reasonably instructed.

Jobholder Entry Requirements – the essential knowledge, skills and behaviours required

Knowledge (Education & Related Experience):

Masters in Public Health, Epidemiology or equivalent (Essential)
Extensive experience in conducting operational research studies in developing countries, including epidemiological surveys and health and/ or disability research (Essential)
Good knowledge of disability issues and equity measurement. (Desirable)
Good knowledge of health and disability research organisations and networks (Essential)
Experience of presenting at external meetings e.g scientific conferences and author on publications in peer reviewed papers (Desirable)
Experience of working on funding proposals to external donors (eg. DFID) (Essential)
Line management and project management experience (Desirable)
Skills (Special Training or Competence):

Excellent communication skills in English, both orally and in writing (Essential)
Excellent data analysis skills using statistical analysis software e.g. STATA (Essential)
Good qualitative data analysis skills, eg. using NVIVO (Desirable);
Strong ability to write funding applications, study protocols and donor reports (Essential);
Project, team and consultant management skills (Essential);
Ability to work across a variety of disciplines and cultures (Essential)
Skills in planning and organising own work and that of others (Essential)
Skills in introducing and implementing change and improvement in systems and behaviours (Desirable).
An understanding of and commitment to, equality of opportunity for disabled people (Essential)
Ability to write academic reports and publications (Essential);
Decision Making skills (Essential)
Delivery and Implementation (Essential)
Experience of GIS software e.g ArcGIS (Desirable)
Written and spoken French (Desirable)
Key Relationships

Internal

SPIDER teams: Research, evaluation, and in particular the GTLs;
All Sightsavers departments, particularly the Programme Systems and Monitoring Team.
Regional and country offices.
External

Eye Health community, especially the International Centre for Eye Health at LSHTM and the KCCO;
Disability research community in particular the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at LSHTM and the Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre (UCL);
Inclusive education research community in particular the Visual Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research at the University of Birmingham;
Other NGOs with whom we share common interests, for example the Fred Hollows Foundation, WaterAid, Handicap International, etc;
Special interest groups with whom we share synergistic interests, for example the Washington Group on Disability Statistics;
In-country governments and health professionals;
WHO.

Ability to travel – on planned visits, for 30% of the year, in sometimes difficult locations.