The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work in conjunction with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org 

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Overview of CHAI's Vaccines program

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). However, despite these successes, >1.5 million children still die each year of vaccine-preventable diseases. Many of these deaths occur in low-income countries, where immunization programs face unprecedented challenges (e.g., access to vaccines and ensuring vaccines reach all targeted people). On the bright side, advances in the development and financing of new vaccines provide great opportunities to tackle diseases and mortality through vaccine prevention.

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:

• Improving affordability and supply security of immunization products;
• Accelerating the uptake of new or under-utilized vaccines;
• Enhancing the performance of vaccine cold chain and logistics systems to increase effective immunization coverage;
• Improving the design and implementation of service delivery to reach the unreached;
• Strengthening the management system and capacity of immunization programs

CHAI's vaccine program supports the national immunization programs in 21 focus countries – Benin, Cambodia, Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Eswatini, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Lesotho, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam- and also engages with global stakeholders such as Gavi, WHO and UNICEF to inform global policies and practices.

Immunization Service Delivery

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 therefore will 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 other health services with immunization to increase routine immunization coverage and strengthen the adolescent, neonatal and 2YL platform used for HPV, HepB BD and MCV/malaria vaccines; and (iii) 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.

Location: This position is flexible to being based in one of CHAI's program countries subject to country leadership approval and/or the ability to obtain work authorisation. See where we work here.

We are seeking a Technical Advisor to join the Global Vaccines Delivery team and support CHAI's work in improving coverage and equity through new vaccine introductions and enhancing service delivery across focus countries.

We are seeking a motivated and mission-oriented individual with strong analytic, problem-solving, and cross-cultural communication skills. The candidate should be experienced at presenting data and messages powerfully through written documents and presentations; working collaboratively in a fast-paced, multicultural environment; and functioning independently with minimal guidance. 

Key responsibilities for this role include, but are not limited to:

1) Provide strategic and programmatic support for the design and implementation of in-country work to improve immunization coverage and equity in a sustainable manner

• Provide input on the approach needed to meet in-country grant and program objectives related to immunization management systems, in line with the program strategy
• Contribute to the design, planning and implementation of high-impact work with CHAI’s local country teams to sustainably transform service delivery in CHAI focus Projects could include:
• Diagnose supply- and demand- side service delivery bottlenecks and developing strategies and interventions for improvement;
• Re-design service delivery strategies for reaching unvaccinated children;
• Develop robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks in which to assess impact of interventions;
• Support governments in codifying results for advocacy to affect policy and practice changes;
• Support governments in designing strategies for scale up
• Support decision making on new vaccine introductions, robust planning and budgeting for new vaccine rollout, identifying risks to successful introductions, diagnose bottlenecks and designing bottleneck mitigation strategies pre- and post-introduction, identify concrete opportunities and best practices for simultaneously boosting new and routine immunization coverage
• Explore and develop cross-country initiatives, for example sharing lessons and ideas between CHAI focus countries and exploring relationships/trends which inform CHAI’s work in several countries
• 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 other related 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

2) Inform national and global practices and policies related to immunization service delivery

• Inform practices & policies based on robust evidence base, insightful analytical perspective, and lessons learned from CHAI and other partners to immunization service delivery and increase coverage & equity
• Develop relationships with key stakeholders in relevant areas (ie. Gavi, WHO, UNICEF SD, Gates Foundation, PATH, JSI, Jhpiego etc.) and establish yourself as a respected and trusted thought leader in this area of focus within CHAI and within the global immunization community
• Disseminate CHAI's programmatic insights to the global immunization community to inform policy and practices

3) Support the development of CHAI's vaccines program, in collaboration with program and country leadership

• Support development of program-wide and country-specific objectives and strategies regarding immunization service delivery
• Support scoping and development of new proposals and identifying relevant donors

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

• Assess progress against overall objectives & milestones in areas of focus and help prepare high-quality briefings for donors and CHAI management, including achievements to date, action plan going forward, and key risks & opportunities
• Assess effectiveness of CHAI's theory of change and approach related to immunization service delivery in focus countries and recommend improvements
• Contribute as a member of the global vaccine team to the effectiveness and collegiality of the team, help identify opportunities and improve CHAI’s vaccines program and team

• Bachelor's degree (Masters-level or above in business, finance, or health science preferred) + at least 5 years of relevant professional experience in public or private sector
• Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills (qualitative and quantitative), including experience with quantitative modeling, data analysis, and study design
• Excellent interpersonal and cross-cultural communication skills, with proven track record of building strong & effective working relationships remotely
• Excellent ability to work independently, set and achieve ambitious targets with limited guidance, and manage competing and sometimes shifting priorities, often under tight deadlines
• Knowledge and experience in vaccines, health systems strengthening, and/or health financing across low-middle income countries
• Proficiency at Microsoft Excel or other data-analysis tools (specialized modeling or programing experience is NOT required)
• Excellent communication skills (including synthesis & presentation) with diverse audiences including government stakeholders, donors and policy makers
• Demonstrated capacity to synthesize evidence into an effective presentations and actionable recommendations for broad range of audience, including Ministries of
• Ability to travel extensively (at least 35% of time) to focus countries and other locations as needed for work  

Advantages

• Experience working with government and in low-middle-income countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Professional proficiency in a second language to support vaccine country program engagement (e.g. French)

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