Job Abstract

E T Consultant - Economist / Tracking Health Equity and Financial Protection

Description

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.

The Human Development (HD) Practice Group (PG)

The World Bank Group (WBG) is the largest provider of development finance and solutions for human development working with high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries to develop country-tailored solutions for human development (HD) under the themes of education, health, social protection, jobs, and gender. The HD PG coordinates with other Practice Groups to ensure a coordinated and integrated approach to development challenges, and through the World Bank Regional Units is expected to deliver the strongest and most pertinent support to our client countries.

The Human Development Vice Presidency (HDVP) at the World Bank Group is made up of the Global Practices for education; health, nutrition, and population; and social protection and jobs; additionally, the HDVP houses the gender group. As such, HD is central to the World Bank Group’s goals to end extreme poverty by 2030 and raise shared prosperity on a livable planet.

Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice

The central contribution of the Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Global Practice to the WBG’s twin goals is to enable the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), in which all people are effectively covered by essential health services, and nobody suffers undue financial hardship as a result of illnesses. In the quest for UHC, the HNP Global Practice is building on progress made in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals, an array of analytical and advisory services, strategic partnerships with partner institutions and other financing agencies, and an active lending portfolio. The HNP Global Practice includes staff members in Washington, DC and country offices.

The HNP Global Practice is led by a Global Director, with the overall responsibility for the GP. The HNP Global Practice Leadership Team, which leads and manages the HNP GP, consists of the Global Director, Regional Directors, and Practice Managers. The HNP Global Practice works with and across multiple sectors, in recognition of the fact that HNP outcomes often depend on actions that lie outside the HNP sector. Accordingly, a capacity to work across GP boundaries, forge coalitions and influence multi-practice solutions is essential for achieving the major objectives of improving HNP outcomes.

The Global Health Unit

The Global Health Unit (GHU) supports WBG HNP teams across the globe to deliver better results through World Bank financed health systems projects and analytical work. The GHU is led by the Practice Manager and has five technical teams on health financing, service delivery, pandemic preparedness and response and public health, climate and health and nutrition. The GHU provides technical assistance to clients and regions, develops analytical work and thought leadership in key technical areas and is responsible for the knowledge and the learning program for client countries and staff. In addition, the GHU manages the institutional relationships with global health institutions and other partners and is responsible for fundraising for the HNP GP.

Background and Objective

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has been defined as the ability of all people who need health services to receive them without suffering undue financial hardship (World Health Organization 2010). The goal of UHC has been added to the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations General Assembly 2015), and the World Bank is strongly committed to helping countries towards the UHC goal. This commitment to UHC and activity to hasten progress toward UHC has increased the demand for metrics that will allow countries and the international community (a) to monitor gaps and progress towards UHC at the country and global levels, (b) to investigate the drivers of UHC, and (c) to improve methodologies and capacity to monitor UHC-related outcomes.
The consultant will primarily support the team in the Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Unit that leads a work program on health equity and financial protection in the GU health financing team. The main activities in this program include:

1. Obtention, organization and harmonization of the household level microdata used for global tracking of health equity and financial protection in health and the Universal Health Coverage Tracking Global Monitoring Report, in collaboration with a team from the World Health Organization.
2. Development of methods for better measurement of health equity and financial protection.
3. Analyses of the drivers of health equity and financial protection, including policy design
4. Capacity strengthening for measurement of health equity and financial protection, data interpretation, and policy design.

The consultant will work on all aspects of this work program, including management of datasets, data analysis, provision of technical assistance to country teams, coordination of data collection activities, and participation in production of presentations, reports, and papers.

Scope of Work

Duties of the consultancy will include, but not be limited to the following:

1. Data acquisition and management:
• Procuring survey data
• Merging and harmonizing diverse datasets to facilitate seamless analysis.
• Cleaning and augmenting datasets, including variable creation.
• Preparing comprehensive documentation for transparent and replicable data handling.
• Conduct quality control over datasets handled by other team members or external consultants.
• Develop / upgrade the data management system to better match the current analytical production need of the unit.

2. Analysis
• Co-lead the formulation of analysis plans, ensuring that the methodologies are sound and aligned with specified objectives.
• Conducting data analysis, including descriptive statistics, regression analysis and other advanced statistical analysis following agreed analysis plans.

3.Co-production of knowledge and dissemination products
• Creating tables, figures, and other data visualizations to communicate analyses results.
• Collaboration on writing of reports, papers.
• Collaboration in developing training and dissemination materials.

4. Support in the coordination of the overall work program
• Assist in the organization of workshops, webinars, and other events.
• Support the coordination and engagement with internal and external collaborators.
• Support in overseeing work done by other consultants and contractors.

5. Support to other empirical or analytical work undertaken by the health financing team as needed.

Selection Criteria

• Master’s degree in economics, statistics, or related fields and minimum of 4 years of related work experience.
• Demonstrable experience in complex data management, analysis and visualization, and reporting. Experience with Household Survey data (Especially LSMS type) is preferred, as well as knowledge on the field of poverty measurement, financial protection and health equity analysis.
• Experience in overseeing survey work in low- and middle-income countries is a plus.
• Excellent proficiency in the use of Stata, R, Tableau or similar packages.
• Excellent written and oral communication in English is required. Knowledge of Spanish or French is preferred.
• Capacity to work simultaneously on a variety of issues and tasks, independently adjusting to priorities and achieving results with agreed objectives and deliver against ambitious deadlines.
• Strong client focus including good interpersonal, diplomatic and team building skills required for building and maintaining collaborative relationships.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

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Note: The selected candidate will be offered a one-year appointment, renewable at the discretion of the World Bank Group, and subject to a lifetime maximum ET appointment of three years. If an ET appointment ends before a full year, it is considered as a full year toward the lifetime maximum. Former and current ET staff who have completed all or any portion of their third-year ET appointment are not eligible for future ET appointments.