Project Title: Ethiopia Health Workforce Development – Increasing Access to Essential Specialty Services
Overview:
Founded in 2002, by President William J. Clinton and Ira C. Magaziner, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (“CHAI”) is a global health organization committed to saving lives, reducing the burden of disease and strengthening integrated health systems in low and middle income countries.
CHAI Ethiopia is currently carrying out a wide range of programs to support the Ministry of Health in improving access to and increasing the quality of health services. As one of CHAI’s largest field offices with more than 170 staff, the Ethiopia office operates programs across a wide range of areas, including maternal, newborn and child health; HIV/AIDS; nutrition; vaccines; health financing and health workforce development.
Project Description:
As a part of its commitment to achieving Universal Health Coverage, the Government of Ethiopia has prioritized national investments in the public health sector to increase the availability and quality of specialty health services with emphasis on connecting rural communities to district-level and referral facilities. Toward this end, the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) requested CHAI to develop academic partnerships to scale up training of medical specialists based on CHAI’s experiences with similar programs in Rwanda and Liberia. In order to ensure that this work aligns with national service delivery needs, CHAI will collaborate with FMOH to set national targets for prioritized cadres (including select medical specialists and the mid-level providers who enable delivery of specialist services), establish educational quality standards for relevant training programs, and design and resource a comprehensive program to strengthen and scale-up training of targeted cadres.
CHAI will approach this work in two phases: during Phase I (2018), CHAI will develop medical specialist staffing targets for Ethiopia’s district and referral facilities, establish national training standards for five priority medical specialty programs, and conduct assessments against these standards at existing medical specialty training programs and associated clinical facilities. This work will inform the development of a costed, prioritized strategy to strengthen medical specialty programs; CHAI will support the government to mobilize resources and engage partners to implement this strategy. During this phase, assessment, planning and quality improvement will be focused on medical specialty programs in internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, surgery, and anesthesiology.
During phase II (2019), CHAI will develop guidelines and conduct similar assessments for mid-level providers who are integral to the delivery of specialty services, such as nurse anesthetists and OR technicians, as well as primary care providers more generally, who play a key role in the referral system that generates demand for specialty services. This work will inform a costed strategy to scale production and improve quality of the mid-level providers required to achieve Ethiopia’s vision of high quality, accessible specialty services.
The CHAI team deployed during Phase I will design, collect, and synthesize data from 12 existing and 4 proposed training hospitals across Ethiopia and work closely with stakeholders in Government, the health education sector, and INGOs to inform program design. The team will rely on clinical experience from global and domestic experts, and work closely with the CHAI’s Global Health Workforce Team to leverage CHAI’s health workforce experience in other countries.
Position Overview:
The Policy Advisor will support the Senior Program Manager and collaborate with the Analytics Manager to manage stakeholders and support the synthesis of findings to inform policy decisions and documents for the Federal Ministry of Health. The Advisor will focus on cultivating buy-in from and facilitating coordination among various stakeholders, including the FMOH, FMOE, training institutions, regulatory bodies, and partner organizations, and will also be responsible for managing external consultants. During Phase I, the Advisor will engage with the FMOH and Regional Health Bureaus to understand current service provision and health workforce target-setting practice, and establish appropriate channels for updating workforce targets at the national and sub-national level; facilitate institutionalization of educational quality standards within FMOH or other linked bodies, as needed; engage with FMOH, FMOE, MOFED, and training institutions, as needed, to understand current health workforce budget and projected resource envelope as part of fiscal space analysis; and collaborate with the Analytics team to ensure updated national staffing targets for medical specialists and the synthesized medical residency program assessment results produce a cogent policy and strategy for the Government of Ethiopia to scale specialty training for priority residency programs. Specifically, the Policy Advisor will take the lead in writing any program design or proposal documents that articulate the interventions required to scale up and strengthen residency training.
Successful candidates must have a passion for results, a commitment to excellence, demonstrated stakeholder management skills, and a demonstrated capacity to work in high-stress environments. This position reports to the Senior Program Manager. This position is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and may require travel to sites within Ethiopia for liaising with medical schools and other key institutions.
Responsibilities:
Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:
Qualifications:
Advantages: