Manager, New Vaccine Introductions & Immunization Service Delivery

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit:http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org.

Position Overview:

CHAI's Global Vaccines Delivery team is hiring for an exciting and incredibly impactful position, with responsibilities covering new vaccine introduction (including COVID), routine vaccine introduction, and improving vaccines service delivery overall. The Manager, New Vaccine Introduction & Service Delivery (NVISD) will manage a small team to provide strategic and implementation support to ~14 focus countries. This is an opportunity to join a fast paced, energized, matrixed team focused on implementing lasting, transformational impact to the global vaccines delivery space.

This role is perfect for candidates with significant management consulting or strategic management experience, individuals who thrive with relationship management and working in a multi-cultural, matrixed environment, and individuals who are excellent communicators & motivating leaders.

Location: This role is posted for base in Netherlands, however, has flexibility to be based in a CHAI program country in Europe or Africa, pending country team leadership approval.

This position will help to achieve and sustain immunization program outcomes, and also serve as a blueprint to identify powerful interventions to improve health systems which could be adapted for other primary health care programs.

1) Support program and grant management, in collaboration with program and country leadership

• Manage a team of ~5 global associates/technical advisors focusing on new vaccine introductions and service delivery
• Support development of program-wide and country-specific objectives, strategies and milestones regarding new vaccine introductions and service delivery for immunization
• In collaboration with country team and regional manager, regularly assess progress against program objectives in areas of focus and help prepare high-quality briefings for donors and CHAI management, including achievements to date, key risks & opportunities, and action plan going forward
• Help improve program team effectiveness and engagement

2) Develop CHAI's vaccines program in the area of new vaccine introduction and immunization service delivery, in collaboration with program and country leadership

• Develop/update CHAI's strategy and thought leadership related to new vaccine introductions and immunization service delivery, both at global and country level, to increase CHAI's effectiveness and impact
• Support fundraising and grant proposal and budget development in line with CHAI's strategy, model, competing priorities and capabilities, both at country and global level
• Support ramp up of new CHAI staff and of new focus countries and strengthen capabilities of existing CHAI staff, leveraging the institutional knowledge from CHAI
• Identify how this work related and builds other CHAI's in-country objectives (e.g. improving vaccine supply chain, supporting sub-national level management systems, ensuring successful transition from Gavi support, etc.), which often require building on strong horizontal management structures. Put in place appropriate mechanisms to ensure cross-fertilization across these objectives.

3) Provide strategic and programmatic support for the design and implementation of work in focus countries to dramatically and sustainably improve immunization service delivery and new vaccine introductions, in collaboration with direct reports and regional manager

• Contribute to the design, planning and implementation of high-impact work with directs and country teams to achieve high and sustainable coverage of new and routine vaccines in CHAI focus countries. Projects to support will include:
  • Strategize for the efficient and effective rollout of new vaccines while maintaining line of sight for improving routine immunizations
  • Improve country sustainability of complex new vaccines targeting older age cohorts
  • Strengthening in-country decision making bodies for designing multi-year new vaccine introduction strategies
  • Design-Test-Monitor and iterate on pilot service delivery interventions to reduce dropout and zero-dose children while providing strategic guidance toward potential scale and sustainability of localized interventions
• Drive continuous development and effective dissemination and use of programmatic "tool kit", lessons learned, and other know-how related to service delivery across CHAI's vaccines program focus countries. Elements of the tool kits may include, but are not limited to:
  • Resource allocation and planning of outreach sessions, including “rule of thumb” guidance for estimating resource needs for outreaches from available data (e.g. population distance to facility), especially in instances where bottom-up estimates from facilities or communities are unavailable
  • Improved global policies and guidelines to ensure better coordination across EPI and MNH programs (e.g. updating of WHO's Safe Birth Checklist to include HepB birth dose vaccination prior to mother/newborn discharge from health facility)
  • Technical support (tools, information and lessons learned developed across CHAI's work) provided to country governments and partners and through global mechanisms that support service delivery and/or new vaccine interventions
• Support program redesign in light of COVID-19 pandemic and the effects on routine and new immunizations

4) Improve national and global practices and policies related to new vaccine introductions and service delivery, in collaboration with direct reports and program leadership

• Develop productive relationships with key stakeholders (e.g., WHO, Gavi, BMGF, UNICEF, PATH, JSI, IHME) and foster effective exchange of know-how with partners
• Become a respected and trusted thought leader in this area of focus within CHAI and within the global immunization community
• Disseminate CHAI's programmatic insights into the global immunization community and inform global policies and country practices beyond CHAI focus countries, including through Global working groups (e.g., EPI manager meetings, WHO hosted regional meetings, antigen specific global working groups, etc.)

• Bachelor's degree (Masters-level or above preferred) in a relevant field
• Minimum 7 years of work experience in a fast-paced, demanding environment
• Proven team management skills with a good eye for people development/coaching
• Excellent strategic thinker and communicator
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills
• Excellent stakeholder management, negotiation/persuasion skills, and integrity
• Excellent inter-personal skills, with ability to work effectively in a multi-cultural, matrixed, and often remote environment
• Strong project management skills, ability to work effectively and deliver results in a high-pressure environment and handle multiple tasks simultaneously
• Ability to adapt and manage changing priorities, timelines, and programmatic objectives
• Entrepreneurial and result-oriented mindset, including ability to work independently, self-motivate, and propose and implement new initiatives
• Strong commitment to CHAI's and the team's mission, dedicated team player
• Ability to travel extensively (at least 35% of time) to focus countries and other locations as needed for work.

Advantages:

• Knowledge of vaccines, service delivery at facility and community level, and/or primary health care systems
• Experience in stakeholder and partner management in high-stakes global environment
• Experience working with government and in developing countries in resource limited settings, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Professional proficiency in a second language of a vaccine program country

Overview of CHAI and CHAI's Vaccines program:

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit:http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org.

Immunization is one of the most successful public health interventions in history. National immunization programs reach >100 million infants every year and have averted globally two to three million deaths every year since the launch of the Expanded Program for Immunization (EPI) in 1974 , whilst the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and rotavirus vaccines could save ~1 million lives per year. Furthermore, great advances in discovering and financing new vaccines provides a great opportunity for countries to further reduce burden of disease such as human papillomavirus (HPV). Despite these successes, 1.5 million children still die each year of vaccine-preventable diseases, many of them in low-income countries, as immunization programs there face unprecedented challenges.

Since 2010, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) has worked to save lives and reduce the burden from vaccine preventable diseases by improving access to immunization services in resource-limited setting by strengthening national immunization programs and by leveraging its experience in-country to improve the global immunization ecosystem. CHAI is pursuing six complementary strategic goals:

1. Improving affordability and supply security of immunization products;
2. Accelerating the uptake of new or under-utilized vaccines;
3. Enhancing the performance of vaccine cold chain and logistics systems to increase effective immunization coverage;
4. Improving the design and implementation of service delivery to reach the unreached
5. Supporting successful transition from Gavi support; and
6. Strengthening the management system and capacity of immunization programs

CHAI's vaccine program very closely supports the national immunization programs in 14 focus countries - Cameroon, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Lesotho, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe- and also engages with global stakeholders such as Gavi, WHO and UNICEF to inform global policies and practices.

Despite significant gains made in immunization coverage from 21% in 1980, global DTP3 coverage has stalled at approximately 85% since 2010, while in 2018 DTP3 coverage in West and Central Africa stagnated at 70%, and in East and Central Africa was at 81%. As a result, nearly one quarter of children under-5 in the region are under- or unimmunized. Immunization coverage is generally much lower for vaccines that are delivered via weaker or complex delivery platforms, such as maternal, neonatal, 9-month, second year and adolescent - whether current vaccines or those slated for introduction. For example, West and Central Africa has stagnated at ~70% measles conjugate vaccine / measles rubella vaccine first dose (MCV1/MR1) coverage since 2010.

CHAI will provide support to countries in strengthening decision-making for the introduction of new vaccines, securing resources (e.g. from Gavi) for introduction support, and planning appropriately for introductions in order to achieve high coverage swiftly and sustainably. In particular, CHAI will focus on support in Gavi-eligible countries that have yet to introduce HPV, PCV, and Rota, and consider future introductions of upcoming Gavi supported vaccines. CHAI will also develop, test, and scale innovative service delivery interventions in focus countries, with the objective to increase coverage in priority populations in a way that can be scaled and sustained by governments. CHAI will support governments to (i) improve the planning and the performance management of immunization sessions; (ii) improve the linkages of maternal and newborn health services with immunization to increase routine immunization coverage and strengthen the neonatal platform used for OPV, BCG, and HepB birth dose; (iii) increase the routine coverage of the nine-month platform (when vaccines against measles, yellow fever, meningitis A or Typhoid should be administered); and (iv) develop better informed coverage plans and support the implementation of key service delivery strategies to target unimmunized children. CHAI will distill the tools and lessons learned from this work in focus countries and disseminate them to the global community.

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