Economist Job at Health Systems Consult Limited (HSCL)

Health Systems Consult Limited (HSCL) is a public health and development consulting firm that provides technical assistance for health systems reforms across Africa. HSCL in collaboration with its partners is providing support to some States in Nigeria to strengthen the strategic purchasing function of their state health insurance schemes and integrate FP/ MCNH services into the schemes.

As part of support to one of the States to improve financing reforms and development of investment case for health, HSCL is seeking technical assistant to the State Ministry of Health in the capacity below:

Job Title: Health Economist

Location: Nigeria
Department: State Ministry of Health
Reports To: Honorable Commissioner for Health
Type of employment: Consultancy

Project Background:
A Strategic Planning Unit is being set up which will act as the think tank for the State Ministry of Health to undertake various studies and policy research work for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the health system in the State. These studies/research work will be conducted with the help of local and international partners and will directly feed into decision making, formulation of strategy, advocacy for improved financing and demonstration of results/ benefits.

One of the key deliverables will be to develop relevant investment cases for health that communicate health benefits in terms that are appreciated by health, budget and finance ministries, partners and other stakeholders. The unit will also provide support for strategic planning for health, promotion of appropriate role for the private sector and efficient resource allocation within the public sector.

The health economist will provide technical assistance to the strategic planning unit of the Ministry ensuring that all stakeholders and their inputs are harmonized to deliver on their mandate. In addition, he will also support capacity building of members of strategic planning unit as well as other relevant staff of the Ministry of Health. The anticipated period of performance is an initial12 months period renewable annually and proposed start date of 2 January 2020.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Master’s degree in relevant field (Health Economics, Public Health, Public Policy, Statistics, or other Social Sciences)
• Minimum of 7 years’ experience in health sector and in health economics-related reviews and analytical work at the National/State level
• Strong economic, statistical and econometric skills, including experience with detailed, high-level data analysis and sampling
• Sound communication and technical writing skills
• Good knowledge of the Nigerian and state health system and key health system actors.
• Possession of cognate experience in providing technical assistance to government at national or sub-national levels is an advantage
• Ability to initiate and see through policy reforms through collaborative, consensus building approaches, especially in the development space.
• Good interpersonal relationship skills
• Proven abilities to set priorities, multi-task, work and deliver independently with limited supervision.

Essential Duties/Tasks and Responsibilities
Working directly under the close supervision and guidance of the Honorable Commissioner for Health, the health economist will:

• Play the leading role in conducting economic analyses and providing evidence for the public health initiatives proposed by the strategic planning unit.
• Coordinate the studies for analysis of impact of user charges versus health insurance and its implications on health care utilization in facilities, with equity analysis focused on utilization by women, vulnerable groups and children for advocacy.
• Analyze the resource allocation pattern to the sector and suggest ways to enhance the value for money while also analyzing the adequacy of the resource allocation, especially for drugs and maintenance.
• Provide project management support for various programs being implemented by the Ministry of Health and contribute to identifying bottlenecks and corrective steps to achieve the expected outcomes.
• Support the Ministry of Health to build business case for health including conducting cost-effectiveness and/or cost-benefit analysis, modeling impact of investments on mortality, morbidity and health status as well as benefits outside the health sector including education, economic productivity, security etc.
• Support the strategic planning unit in conducting scenario modeling to visualize likely direction and magnitude of changes resulting from proposed reforms, reveal crucial trade-offs associated with choices and estimate the cost implications of reform initiatives.
• Take an active role in monitoring and evaluation of projects and provide feedback to the team on the progress of various components- the achievements and slow-moving areas. This would include updating the monitoring indicators of projects on a regular basis based on the project data and studies; preparing reports based on the information generated by projects for policy purposes as well as to strengthen the information collection methods on a regular basis.
• Provide periodical reports on the progress and status of all assigned tasks.
• Carry out any other task assigned in pursuance of these objectives or as assigned by the Honourable Commissioner.

Deadline: 6th December, 2019.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send a Cover Letter (no more than a page) and updated CV in one document to: recruitment@hscgroup.org using the Job Title as the subject of the mail.