Health Director

Position: Health Director

Location: Syria / Jordan

Job Category: Director’s level

Reports to: RI Whole of Syria Country Director

Direct Supervision: Health specialists

Technical reporting line: Chief of Party

Position Type: Full – time

About Relief International.

Relief International (RI) is a leading nonprofit organization working in 16 countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises and chronic poverty.

Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact. Our signature approach — which we call the RI Way—emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design and implement the solutions that work best for them.

Relief International includes the four members of the RI Alliance in the USA, UK, France, and Belgium. Under our alliance agreement, we operate under a single, shared management structure with one CEO and one Board of Directors.

About our Programs.

RI is active in 16 countries around the world, including some of the most fragile: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. Often, RI is the only organization providing assistance to highly vulnerable communities.

• RI employs 7,000+ staff and auxiliary workers
• 97% of staff are in-country nationals
• We only have some 90 ex-pat staff out of 7,000+
• RI spent $125 million in 2019 on our programs.

RI invests in four broad program sectors: Economic Opportunity, Education, Health, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). We design our programs to incorporate The RI Way: local participation, integrated programming, the development of civic skills, and partnerships including with local NGOs, governments, and the private sector.

RI supports solutions that reinforce and improve upon existing in-country systems. Where such systems do not exist or are chronically underperforming, RI’s crisis response lays the foundation for long-term, sustainable change.

Position Summary:

Relief International (RI) is currently seeking a Director, Health for a subcontract under USAID’s upcoming health resilience and stabilization activity in Syria. The Director, Health will provide overall direction to health sector resilience and health system strengthening interventions. The position will have overall responsibility for strengthening institutional capacity of local health departments to oversee health service coordination, quality, budgeting, information systems, and workforce development. The duration of the project will be 5 years, and the employee is expected to be working between Amman (Jordan) and northeast Syria (the details on time spent between locations is subject to further design and discussion). The position is contingent on Relief International being awarded the subcontract under this activity.

Position Responsibilities and Duties:

• Under the supervision of the Chief of party, provide technical and programmatic leadership to all health aspects of the project, ensuring the application of internationally recognized best practices to achieve project results.
• Supervise a team of health systems strengthening specialists to provide tailored support to local health actors at the field level, including recruitment, mentoring/coaching, and performance management.
• Provide strategic guidance for the review of project approaches, ensuring a focus on vulnerable populations, conflict sensitivity and adaptability to changing conditions in the operating environment.
• Co-lead overall work planning in coordination with project leadership, identifying aspects of health systems strengthening work requiring special attention or turnaround, and ensuring the effective allocation of resources to specific tasks.
• Provide strategic oversight and quality assurance in the design and execution of interventions aimed at improving service delivery and health information systems, and strengthening the health workforce and training systems.
• Contribute to overall project knowledge management and M&E functions by working closely with the project’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning team, and ensuring the effective use of project data in decision-making.
• Lead the design and supervise technical assistance to the execution of small grants to downstream partners and health actors to strengthen local health systems.
• Manage the identification and use of external consultant and technical experts to support specialized components of project delivery.
• Help identify, share, and build on best practices and lessons learned in programming, policy, and management.
• Collaborate and ensure synergies with other health interventions and partners in Syria, including the strengthening of strategic relations with relevant donors, local authorities and international organizations present.

Competencies

Field Competencies

Contributions to program achievements

Flexibility and Resilience

Accountability

Organizational Competencies

Accountability

Cultural sensitivity

Leadership Competencies

Leadership & People Management

Strategic thinking & Visioning

Building collaborative relationships

Results orientation

Essential qualifications, experience and competencies:

• A Master’s degree in Public Health or a related field.
• At least 12 years of experience with progressive responsibilities in public health program/project management.
• Experience working (and achieving health results) in complex and conflict affected areas.
• Skills in strengthening service delivery programs, training, performance and quality improvement, and monitoring and evaluation.
• Demonstrated ability to interact with donors, implementing partners, and host country governments on health sector resilience and health systems strengthening issues.
• Experience providing health systems strengthening and integrated technical assistance to government agencies, NGOs or other organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to work with donors, senior health officials, implementing partners, institutions at the national and regional level, local nongovernmental organizations, and community-based organizations and structures.
• Strong oral and written communication and presentations skills in English and Arabic required.
• Familiarity with USAID or other USG administrative, management and reporting procedures and systems; experience with USAID acquisition/contracts preferred.
• Ability to coach, mentor and develop technical capacity in national programs and technical staff.
• Ability to live under stressful conditions, including conflict affected environments.

Relief International’s Values:

We uphold the Humanitarian Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and operational independence. We affirmatively engage the most vulnerable communities. We value:

• Inclusiveness
• Transparency and accountability
• Agility and innovation
• Collaboration
• Sustainability