Job opportunity New Delhi: Principal Health Consultant with “Oxford Policy Management”.

Oxford Policy Management (OPM) India are looking to recruit a Principal Health Consultant to be based out of New Delhi. This is a full time senior staff position, who will be part of OPM’s global health team, with a principal consultant representing the highest technical tier of staff in OPM’s structure.

OPM are a leading public policy analysis and advisory organisation who work with national and sub-national governments, international development partners and other stakeholders in low- and middle-income countries to achieve growth and reduce poverty and disadvantage through public policy reform.

OPM started as a research unit within the University of Oxford in the 1970’s, before becoming independent in 1996. Our consultants combine very strong academic backgrounds, a desire to use our technical, analytical and conceptual skills to work on applied policy and development problems, and a practical understanding of how policy is made and delivered.

OPM are one of very few organisations who work across the whole policy cycle, including formative research and analysis, diagnostic and design work, strategic implementation support to governments in both centre of government type functions (planning, budgeting, strategy) and the organisation and management of service delivery, the development of monitoring systems, the delivery of operational, process, programme and impact evaluations, and the feeding back of evidence into policy debates.

Our organisational belief is that through working across the whole policy cycle, there are feedback loops that improve our ability to deliver high quality work in any one part of it, as we are able to understand how Government works in reality, the practical challenges in improving service delivery, the political challenges in achieving policy reform and how policy and service delivery translates into real outcomes on the ground.

OPM have a stellar global reputation in the field of health, working with Governments, international agencies, leading practitioners and academics around the world. Our core areas of expertise include health financing, human resources for health, health governance and service delivery, and specialised economic analysis and monitoring and evaluation.

OPM have a particularly established footprint in the health landscape in India. OPM have had a full time office in New Delhi for seven years (and have worked in India for nearly three decades), with nearly forty full time staff and dozens more project staff. We have satellite offices in Bihar, Odisha, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Kerala, and an in house data team that run large scale quantitative surveys and qualitative studies. Our work has predominantly been at State level, at the front and back end of the policy cycle, including:

· MLE partner for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their Bihar Technical Support Programme, which includes developing a comprehensive monitoring system to assess the strength of the public health and nutrition system across Bihar across the WHO building blocks; analysing the impact of interventions on the system as a whole and service delivery outcomes; specialised quality of care evaluations looking at the effect of retraining providers on BEmONC, CEmONC and family planning practice in public facilities; and policy, process and cost-effectiveness studies

· Leading a rigorous mixed methods impact evaluation of a programme to improve public sector delivery of facility and community based newborn care and post-partum family planning under the Norway-India Partnership Initiative (NIPI) in Bihar, Rajasthan, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh

· Supporting the Government of Bihar to design, pilot and evaluate a conditional cash transfer aimed at reducing maternal and child undernutrition, funded by the UK Department for International Development

· Supporting the Government of Nagaland to design a series of RBF reforms to the way in which community preventative and promotive health services are organised, managed and financed, as part of a broader World Bank supported sector support programme

· Supporting the Government of Madhya Pradesh to design a conditional cash transfer aimed at improving MCH outcomes, funded by the World Bank

· Undertaking a rigorous mixed methods impact evaluations of an initiative to support improve private sector delivery of family planning services and products in Bihar and Odisha (Project Ujjwal, funded by DFID)

· Working with the WHO on a study of the migration of doctors from Kerala and Bihar

· Undertaking a mixed methods evaluation of a Save the Children – Reckitt Benckiser collaboration to implement a comprehensive approach to prevent and manage diarrhoea in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Delhi

· Undertaking an evaluation of the UK Government’s Frameworks for Malaria and Reproductive, Maternal and Newborn Health

OPM are seeking to build upon this track record and reputation for high quality applied research, analysis and advisory services in India so that we can maximise our contribution to improved health policy and health outcomes. In the short term, this is likely to remain focused on RMNCH policy and demand side financing work, but is expected to evolve to cover emerging policy priorities including health financing and non-communicable diseases.

The candidate that we hire for this position will provide intellectual and technical leadership on OPM’s health (and related) work in India, ensure maximum contribution to improved public policy and development outcomes of OPM’s work through a range of dissemination activities, and further develop OPM’s reach, reputation and relationships with government and key clients.

The candidate will also be expected to work on select international assignments as part of OPM’s global health team.

The candidate must have a stellar academic track record, ideally with a PhD from a leading international university, and proven experience of consistently delivering world class applied policy research or policy consulting assignments. They must have demonstrated a passion for improving health policy and constructively engaging with government counterparts.

The candidate must also demonstrate high levels of professional, interpersonal and communication skills alongside their analytical and technical skills as they will be expected to lead client engagement, oversee the successful delivery of projects, and contribute to the acquisition of new work.

The candidate should have experience of health policy in India, and ideally have an existing set of networks and relationships. The candidate will need to fit into OPM’s non-hierarchical, values driven working culture, and be willing to work in teams and mentor other staff.

The full job description can be found here http://www.opml.co.uk/join-us/vacancies, and feel free to write to the Country Manager, Tom Newton-Lewis (tom.newtonlewis@opml.co.uk) for more information. The application deadline is the 8th July.