Programme Specialist - Domestic financing of Immunization (P-3), PG - Social Policy, New York (Temporary Appointment 364days)

Overview

Support UNICEF's technical leadership and input on domestic financing of immunization and health services.

You have:

• An advanced university degree (Master’s degree) in economics, health economics, public health, public policy, or related technical field required.
• A minimum of five (5) years of relevant professional experience at national and/or international levels in economic analysis of health and immunization financing is required.
• Knowledge and experience in government financial management, including the government budget process for health or immunization is an asset.
• Demonstrated understanding and experience in global processes and tools for monitoring and reporting on immunization financing is required.
• Fluency in English (written and verbal) is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, Russian, French or Spanish) is an asset.

Contract

This is a P-3 contract. This kind of contract is known as Professional and Director staff. It is normally internationally recruited only. It's a staff contract. It usually requires 5 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 131,084 USD and 171,644 USD.

Please keep in mind that the salary displayed here is an estimation by UN Talent based on the location and the type of contract. It may vary depending on the organization. The recruiter should be able to inform you about the exact salary range. In case the job description contains another salary information, please refer to this one.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

As part of its mandate to protect and enhance the rights and well-being of all children, UNICEF seeks to support the mobilization, allocation and utilization of domestic public financial resources to enhance social outcomes and reduce poverty and inequality.

Domestic revenues exceed overseas development assistance (ODA) even in most low-income and fragile states. Supporting governments to improve the amount and quality of their spending on investments and services for children is critical to improve outcomes for children. UNICEF focuses on not only the adequacy of spending, but also on efficiency, effectiveness, equity and transparency, and works to identify and address the public financial management (PFM) challenges and opportunities that directly affect child outcomes across all its areas of programming.

UNICEF targets and customizes its public finance approach to the specific needs, challenges and entry points of different social sectors and services. UNICEF’s focus on results for children highlights the importance of considering the entire public finance chain from national policies and plans and the budget cycle through to implementation and service delivery at facility or local level. This requires understanding the public finance roles and responsibilities of sector ministries and subnational governments, as well as central finance ministries, to identify opportunities and entry points to strengthen public finance for impact on delivery of services or investments in children.

UNICEF is actively engaged in global and country programming to strengthen public finance for health, with a particular focus on sustainable domestic financing for immunization. UNICEF is a leading technical agency for immunization. Together with its partners, UNICEF supplies vaccines to reach approximately 45% of the world’s children under five years. In over 100 countries, UNICEF works with governments, non-governmental organizations, and other UN agencies to procure and distribute vaccines, keep supplies safe and effective, engage communities and help ensure affordable access for even the hardest-to-reach families.

For every child, Health for all……

The purpose of the job is to support UNICEF’s technical leadership and input to global and country level engagement on strengthening domestic financing of immunization and related health services.

The Programme Specialist will undertake the following activities:

1. Development of a global database to capture government immunization budget data
2. Strengthen global immunization expenditure and financing data collection and monitoring systems.
3. Contribute to the design, implementation, oversight and global reporting of country level studies on strengthening domestic budgeting for immunization, primary health care, and related social services, including in collaboration with global partners.
4. Contribute to the development and piloting of innovative strategies to expand immunization coverage for underserved and vulnerable communities, including through the integration with social protection, or other social services.
5. Contribute to the design and oversight of global and country level analysis of government investment in social investments related to health care, including early child development, in collaboration with global partners.

How can you make a difference?

Development of a global database to capture government immunization budget data

• Establish a reference group of global partners, government experts and immunization financing specialists to define different use cases for data requirements, data verification, and analytical outputs, as well as management of confidentiality and quality
• Identify and obtain relevant sample of government immunization budgets to inform the design of the budget database pilot, in consultation with key global and country partners
• Establish specifications and programming needs for data collection, cleaning, and presentation, in collaboration with technical experts and programmers from UNICEF Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring division
• Propose data visualization and analytical products for presentation and consultation with reference group members
• Undertake iterative processes to expand the database to increase country coverage and data disaggregation

Strengthen global immunization expenditure and financing data collection and monitoring systems

• Provide technical inputs into a five year plan to strengthen immunization expenditure and financing data and use, and identify opportunities and responsibilities for UNICEF in the plan implementation
• Contribute to implementation and analysis of a global survey on immunization financial information and data to establish the use case and value of different mechanisms and tools for collection of data and indicators
• Develop recommendations and proposals for revisions to global immunization and health data tools and products where, indicated by the global survey, including the WHO/UNICEF Joint Reporting Form, and National Health Accounts.
• Support the design and delivery of comprehensive field testing of any proposed modifications of tools, and prepare reviews and reports of field test results

Contribute to the design, implementation, oversight and global reporting of country level studies on strengthening domestic budgeting for immunization, primary health care, and related social services, including in collaboration with global partners. Activities includes:

• Provide technical assistance to integrate the results of National Immunization strategy costings (NIS.COST) into government plans and budgets
• Provide technical support and assistance into analysis on the links between internal and external vaccine financing and vaccine stock-outs, in collaboration with UNICEF Supply Division
• Provide technical input to health economic studies or implementation research, including the design of study objectives and protocols and the identification of cross-country themes suitable for global lessons
• Provide technical insights and inputs into the implementation of research into country prioritization of external COVID-19 vaccine delivery funds
• Support UNICEF country offices develop concept notes and funding proposals to access global resources and support, including developing research methodologies and identifying cross-cutting research themes across countries.

Contribute to the development and piloting of innovative strategies to expand immunization coverage for underserved and vulnerable communities, including through the integration with social protection, or other social services

• Undertake literature reviews and regional and country consultations to source innovative approaches to identify and address national and subnational financing barriers to immunization service delivery in zero dose communities
• In collaboration with UNICEF Social Protection experts and global partners, contribute to the design of implementation research of mechanisms and approaches to leverage social protection to address poverty related barriers and provide incentives to access immunization
• In collaboration with UNICEF Immunization experts and global partners, contribute to the development of research and evaluation strategies to document evidence on innovative country approaches to increase the equity of immunization services, including strategies to reach zero dose communities

Contribute to the design, oversight and dissemination of global, regional and country level analysis of government investment in social investments related to health care, including early child development, in collaboration with global partners

• Contribute to the design and oversight of global research on early childhood development investments within health care financing, including through collaboration with partners and experts on methods to identify spending on early child development in both global health data and national health budgets
• Provide technical support to countries applying problem driven iterative adaptation approaches to identify and address public finance barriers to health service delivery
• Contribute to evidence generation on financing challenges for health service delivery as part of system strengthening for pandemic and health emergency preparedness
• Contribute to global evidence generation on public finance priorities to strengthen community health and mechanisms to adequately resource community health care workers
• Provide technical review and quality assurance of draft country research and analysis products, consolidate country level findings into global data monitoring and reporting, and identify and document concepts with potential for broader application across other social sectors and contexts

• Contribute to the development and delivery of core messages on social sector financing at global and regional forums, including side events or input to working groups for forums such as the High-Level Political Forum, Financing for Development, IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, G20 and Integrated National Financing Frameworks.

  To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s degree) in economics, health economics, public health, public policy, public administration or a related technical field required.

• A minimum of five (5) years of relevant professional experience at national and/or international levels in economic analysis of health and immunization financing is required.
• Analysis of domestic health and immunization financing at national and subnational level in low-income country contexts is desired.
• Knowledge and experience in government financial management, including the government budget process for health or immunization is an asset.
• Knowledge and practical experience implementing costing and financing tools for health and immunization, including immunization costing, immunization and health expenditure reviews, budget analysis of national health accounts, and analysis of immunization financing within government financial data.
• Demonstrated understanding and experience in global processes and tools for monitoring and reporting on immunization financing, including eJRF and national health accounts
• Experience in research design and data analysis for health and immunization financing, including the design of randomised control trials
• Experience coordinating multi-stakeholder initiatives and building strong collaborations and consensus approaches and experience grant management and grant reporting.
• Fluency in English (written and verbal) is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, Russian, French or Spanish) is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability (CRITA), and sustainability

Please click Here to view UNICEF's core values and Here to view our competency framework.

UNICEF competencies required for this post are.

• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1)
• Works Collaboratively with others (1)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (1)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (2)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (2)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (2)

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to including everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks, and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination.

UNICEF is committed to promoting the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.

Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid).

Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF.

UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

“UNICEF only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/”

For more information on remuneration and benefits, please visit UNICEF’s Entitlements’ page. If you would like to find estimates for entitlements, you may use the online Salary Estimate Calculator

• Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Potential interview questions