Health system strengthening expert (M/W)

Expertise France has developed the project named « Harnessing Effective Approaches on Leadership, coordination and Training – H.E.A.L.T.H. », aiming to strengthen the Ministry of Health coordination and oversight role at national level, the leadership, management, and governance skills at sub-national levels and improve quality of training offered in nursing and midwives’ schools in the three counties of Montserrado, Margibi, and Nimba. The project will complement the interventions package proposed by ACF Liberia and both EF and ACF will coordinate the implementation of their activities.

The following specific objectives will contribute to the achievement of the project goal:
– SO1: Strengthen the leadership, management, and governance (LMG) skills in health administration of 25 facility managers, six district managers and three CHO of Montserrado, Nimba and Margibi counties.
– SO2: Strengthen MOH national coordination and oversight role.
– SO3: Improve the quality of training in five pilot nursing and midwives’ schools in the three counties.

Objectives and tasks

The mission of the short term expertise is part of the implementation of specific objective 1: Strengthen the leadership, management, and governance (LMG) skills in health administration of 25 facility managers, six district managers and three CHOs of Montserrado, Nimba and Margibi counties

General objectives of the mission are to :
– update/revise the MOH Leadership and management policy based on a LMG assessment,
– develop LMG standards, SOP and supervision checklist
– participate in the training of the managers on LMG curriculum

The Expert will have to implement the following tasks:

– Consultation and assessment:
o Hold a consultation with relevant stakeholders to gather achievements, lessons learned and bottlenecks during the implementation of the expired LMG policy.
o Conduct an initial LMG skills/capacity assessment of managers across three counties, six districts and the HFs and disseminate findings from the assessment.
o Support the organization of a workshop to disseminate findings from the assessment

– Update/revision of policy papers:
o Update the Leadership and Management policy.
o Support the MoH to develop and agree on standards for improved LMG skills and capacities.
o Support the development of the LMG SOP for the operationalization of the LMG standards.
o Support the development of a LMG supervision checklist to integrate in the supervision checklist and assess compliance to LMG standards during supervision visits.

– Trainings:
o Train county, district, facilities managers on LMG curriculum.

– Action plans:
o Support county, district, and facility teams to develop specific action plans to address gaps identified during the LMG assessment.
o Provide technical support for the implementation of action plans
o Set up a system to identify and reward high performing teams (non-monetary incentives)
o Support Counties to conduct quarterly supervision visits in districts, and facilities to assess improvement in LMG competencies and implementation of action plans
o Support MOH Central to conduct bi-annual joint supervision visits in counties, districts, and facilities to assess improvement in LMG competencies and implementation of action plans

Additionally, the expert will:

• Work in close collaboration with the Project Manager and the Project/MEAL Officer to implement activities and liaise with national stakeholders to contribute to project ownership
• Liaise with ACF team to ensure the complementarity of activities
• Produce expected deliverables on time

Expertise France (EF) is a public interministerial agency responsible for technical cooperation which provides project engineering and technical assistance worldwide. EF operates in various fields of development and institutional cooperation including safety and security reform, post-crisis/ stability, public health, human rights, strengthening of institutions and NGOs and governance. Carrying out large-scale, multi-stakeholder programs, EF supports cooperation between individuals, teams and institutions with very different statuses, cultures and specialties. EF has acquired a sound experience in administrative and financial management of large-scale international programs.

Between 2020 and 2022, Action Against Hunger (ACF) implemented an AFD-funded project in Liberia as part of the “Health in Common” (SEC) initiative which aimed to strengthen health systems across the counties of Montserrado, Margibi and Nimba. Based on this experience and the positive feedback from the MOH and CHOs, AFD will fund a new program implemented by ACF and Expertise France.

Qualifications and competences

• Preferably a PhD in Public Health;
• Complementary university degrees desired: human resources for health, health systems modelling, planning;
• In-depth knowledge of public health policies and the Liberia health system;
• Ability to design public health studies;
• Ability to solve complex problems;
• Ability to build trusting relationships with national and international partners;
• Excellent written and oral communication skills (drafting technical, strategic or project implementation activities, drafting briefing notes or articles), formulating positions and defending them before authorities;
• Very good level of office tools, including Excel and Word ;
• Excellent written and oral English.

Professional experience

• Proven experience in research and studies in the field of health systems and services;
• Proven experience in defining health human resources strategy and policy;
• Proven experience in diagnosis and evaluation of public health policies ;
• Proven experience in public health project design and strategy paper writing on projects in Africa;
• Proven experience in facilitating meetings;
• Representation and institutional dialogue with authorities;