Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) Advisor

Overview

Jhpiego seeks a Senior MERL Advisor to provide technical leadership, oversight and strategic direction for monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (M&E) activities for an upcoming Unitaid-funded triple elimination (HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B) global project. The $20 million project aims to support sub-Saharan African countries to design and deploy integrated elimination programming, overcome market barriers that limit access to critical commodities and build demand for integrated elimination programs. The project will operate over a 3-5 year-period.

The Senior MERL Advisor will supervise and manage the M&E team and oversee the collection, management, analysis, and use of project monitoring and research data, ensuring that lessons learned are integrated into project implementations to continuously improve quality of interventions and outcomes. S/he is responsible for documenting and disseminating project successes, challenges and lessons learned to Unitaid. The Senior MERL Advisor will also be responsible for designing and conducting assessments, operations research and evaluations to address project needs. S/he will liaise with and support consortium partners and government ministries to implement monitoring and evaluation activities.

This position is contingent upon award from Unitaid.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and direction on M&E to ensure the project achieves its goals and corresponding objectives and targets
• Oversee the development and implementation of project performance monitoring plan to efficiently track, use and disseminate performance indicators and results over the life of the project, including routine service delivery data reporting, baseline and end line assessments,
• Lead and oversee implementation research activities across project countries including development of study protocols and standard operating procedures, ethics review, implementation, data analysis and writing study documentation
• Supervise a team of M&E professionals, ensuring high-quality implementation of all monitoring, evaluation and learning activities
• Develop and oversee implementation of robust context-appropriate systems for data collection, quality assurance, analysis and reporting on activity outputs/outcomes and program quality
• Lead results reporting to Unitaid by providing written documentation on M&E activities and indicator results for progress and annual reports, as appropriate
• Ensure alignment of project systems and approaches with national monitoring and evaluation guidelines, protocols, information and reporting systems
• Cultivate strategic M&E relationships and alliances with monitoring, evaluation and learning counterparts in other projects, national institutions, and key stakeholders, leading initiatives to learn from project data and adapt intervention strategies as appropriate
• Use data to contribute towards strategic decision-making and project planning with project leadership
• Support project leadership to champion holistic approaches to collaboration, learning and adapting (CLA), including design and implementation of an action-oriented project research and learning agenda, routine analysis of available health sector data sources, and application of best practices in knowledge management
• Ensuring research and learning activities comply with Ministry of Health in host countries, Johns Hopkins University and World Health Organization institutional ethics review board policies
• Ensure quality of data through data verification procedures including routine data quality audits and that these are routinely carried out during the project lifecycle
• Represent M&E activities in public and professional circles through meetings, conferences, and presentations
• Ensure relevant data is entered into Jhpiego’s organization-wide performance management system designed to capture, analyze, and disseminate project data
• Ensure project compliance with Unitaid monitoring, evaluation, research and open data policies
• Promote and support the dissemination of project information among the project team
• Work with project and financial staff to prepare and track progress of project and activity budgets
• Train and mentor project staff and implementing partners in monitoring and evaluation methods, tools, and systems
• Ensure protection of participant data and confidentiality during all monitoring, evaluation and research implementation and dissemination processes
• Support the designated Internal Review Board (IRB) focal point in-country including maintaining current certification from 1) CITI human subjects ethics course and 2) CITI Good Clinical Practices (GCP) course

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree in public health, demography, statistics, social sciences or related field or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of work experience in monitoring and evaluating multi-year international health sector development projects (> $8M per year)
• Proven expertise in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methodologies, implementation research approaches, health management information systems, data visualization and reporting
• Demonstrated strong management, coordination, teamwork and planning skills with proven ability to function effectively with multiple host-country counterparts in both the public, NGO and private sectors
• M&E experience in maternal and newborn health programming
• Strong technical skills, including ability to process and analyze data using DHIS2 and one or more statistical software packages, e.g., SPSS, Epi-Info, Stata, MS Excel.
• Experience hiring and supervising personnel and ensuring they acquire the necessary training and skills to meet evolving project needs
• Excellent diplomacy skills and a proven ability to establish and maintain interpersonal and professional relationships with Unitaid, host-country counterparts and representatives from other key stakeholders such as NGOs, CSOs, and the private sector
• Demonstrated outstanding leadership, strategic thinking, organizational, team-building, and representational skills
• Expertise in research to practice—identifying and adapting best practices to specific project contexts
• Excellent skills in facilitation, team building, and coordination
• Excellent verbal, written interpersonal and presentation skills in French and English
• Ability to coach, mentor and develop technical capacity in regional and national projects and technical staff
• Ability to travel nationally and internationally as needed.

This role is exclusively open to candidates who are already located in any of the countries where Jhpiego currently operates

Total compensation will be based on the country of hire and Jhpiego’s local compensation plan.