Bangladesh: Director Health Management Systems

Pathfinder Overview

Pathfinder International is a global leader in sexual and reproductive health. We place reproductive health care at the center of all that we do—believing that it is not only a fundamental human right, but is critical for expanding life opportunities for women, families, communities, and nations, and paving the way for transformations in environmental stewardship, decreases in population pressures, and innovations in poverty reduction. Pathfinder provides women, men, and adolescents with a range of quality health services—from contraception and maternal care to HIV prevention and AIDS care and treatment. Pathfinder strives to strengthen access to family planning, ensure availability of safe abortion services and post-abortion care, advocate for sound reproductive health policies, and, through all of our work, improve the rights and lives of the people we serve.

Program Overview

Pathfinder International is seeking to recruit a Director Health Management Systems (HMS) for the NGO Health Service Delivery Project (NHSDP) in Bangladesh. This 5-year USAID/DFID-funded project focuses on delivering a defined set of primary health care and family planning services (an essential service package, ESP) through a nation-wide network of nearly 400 static clinics, over 10,000 satellite clinics and around 8,000 community-based workers. This Smiling Sun (Surjer Hashi in Bangla) network serves a catchment population of approximately 26 million people. The project emphasizes providing access to services for the poor and underserved. An integrated Behavior change communications (BCC) and community mobilization strategy seeks to create an enabling environment for better access to quality services.

Position Purpose

The Director Health Management Systems will provide technical and managerial oversight for a team of health and family planning experts which provides technical assistance to the partner NGO and clinic staff who operate the Smiling Sun network. The Director’s main objective is to ensure that quality services are delivered across the network. This requires organizing and deploying the technical team in a systematic way to monitor, assess, plan and implement activities and interventions that promote quality of services based on project contractual obligations and in keeping with project work plans.

The Director HMS will ensure that project technical assistance and performance improvement initiatives are systematically and effectively implemented in order to deliver high quality and timely ESP services, especially to poor and marginalized populations. This includes ensuring that policies and procedures that comply with regulations and current practice standards are in effect throughout the network; and that competency based technical training and technical assistance for service providers, clinic managers and NGO quality assurance managers is undertaken as needed. S/he will also coordinate closely with the other program areas related to BCC/Community Mobilization; capacity building; and performance based grants.

Responsibilities

1. Work closely with the Deputy Chief of Party Service Delivery and NHSDP senior management to ensure achievement of project goals and objectives.

2. Ensure development and implementation of systematic quality management processes and procedures throughout the Smiling Sun network

3. Ensure that the project technical team systematically and routinely provides technical assistance to Smiling Sun clinics to ensure quality services and to achieve performance results mandated for the project

4. Ensure regular identification of service delivery strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats throughout the Surjer Hashi network, and with respect to the SH network body, continually ensuring program planning and implementation that addresses identified problems and priorities

5. Facilitate technical linkages between project technical experts and relevant technical support from both Pathfinder and CARE head offices

6. Coordinate closely with the M&E team to ensure effective monitoring of service delivery performance, both in terms of access and quality

7. Use available monitoring data and other information to monitor, assess and improve access to quality services

8. Facilitate the technical team and clinics/NGOs to use data and other available information to continually improve access to and quality of services

9. Coordinate with relevant partner organizations (especially those funded by USAID and DFID) as well as with the GOB, to ensure institutionalized quality assurance.

10. Ensure that the technical team maintains relationships with relevant government bodies, as well as with professional organizations such as medical organizations (FIGO affiliates), midwife association, pharmacist organizations, etc.

11. Facilitate regular and smooth liaison between team members and key counterparts, collaborating agencies, governmental offices, research organization, and other NGOs

12. Coordinate with the BCC/CM team to help ensure that interventions in those areas are supporting increased access to quality services

Basic Requirements

• Masters' degree in Public Health; and/or Management; and/or another equivalent and relevant field (e.g. quality management)

• Proven success in managing diverse teams to achieve results for improved health service delivery and health outcomes

• Proven success in setting and achieving high standards of work and consistently meeting project goals

• Strong management and leadership skills, with capacity to think and act strategically

• Ability to work well with colleagues from diverse backgrounds; to communicate effectively; and to work independently as well as in a team

• Strong communication skills in written and spoken English

• Strong capacity to use MS Outlook and various MS Office applications (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

Preferred Qualifications

· Health care qualification

· Work experience with USAID-funded health program(s), especially programs that included interventions to improve access to quality services

· Experience managing health programming in Bangladesh

· Ability to be based in Dhaka and travel throughout Bangladesh up to 30% of the time

Pathfinder International is proud to be an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer.

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