Working Title: Project Officer, Consultant, Indonesia, 12 months
Job Profile/Job Code/Grade:
FTE: 100%
Supervisor:

Position Description:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is a dynamic organization at the University of Washington. Its mission is to monitor global health conditions and health systems, as well as to evaluate interventions, initiatives, and reforms.  IHME carries out a range of projects within different research areas with the aim to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base to make decisions that achieve better health. IHME accomplishes these aims by working with a range of collaborators across the world. Currently, we engage with more than 4,400 collaborators from more than 140 countries. 

IHME has an exciting opportunity to join the team as the Project Officer for the Indonesia Subnational Burden of Disease Project led by Principle Investigator Professor Ali Mokdad. This position is based in Indonesia and the primary purpose of the role is to expand IHME’s impact by providing cultural context and knowledge of local factors influencing burden of disease in Indonesia, building sustainable collaborations with institutions and experts in Indonesia, and contributing to the development and execution of analytic strategies to produce results. Ultimately, this individual will serve as an in-country champion and connect IHME to Indonesia local collaborators to assist with data collection and engage with local leaders to improve and utilize results.

The Indonesia Project Officer will develop and manage relationships with a variety of external collaborators from governments, multilaterals, donor organizations, health care delivery agencies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, finding new ways for them to partner with IHME, and helping to drive forward key deliverables with the aid of critical institutional and individual partners. These deliverables include:

• helping to produce subnational estimates of diseases, injuries, and risk factors for thirty-four separate and distinct subnational units of Indonesia;
• building a robust network of in-country collaborators and stakeholders and facilitating their participation in the analytic enterprise;
• supporting the publication of academic papers, reports, presentations, and similar outputs;
• facilitating involvement, buy-in, trust, and policy uptake of study outputs at different levels in Indonesia.

This role will manage relationships with a high degree of strategic foresight, tactical insight, and diplomacy. In the course of advancing key activities and deliverables, the Indonesia Project Officer will adapt to changing priorities, political landscapes, and other factors affecting collaborative endeavors.  In addition to becoming articulate about the methods and results, the Indonesia Project Officer must be adept at facilitating communication among stakeholders from a variety of academic disciplines and institutional settings in Indonesia. Finally, the Indonesia Project Officer must fully understand the project goals and be able to translate them into action by managing resources to achieve important deadlines for the delivery of complex products and tasks. Overall, the Indonesia Project Officer will be a critical member of a dynamic, cross-institutional, and cross-national team. This position is contingent on project funding availability.

Responsibilities:

Research command

Develop a command of the intellectual material related to the Indonesia Subnational Burden of Disease Project including data inputs, methodologies, and results for subnational burden of disease estimation.
Develop a broad understanding of IHME’s related research portfolio including human capital estimation, forecasting, and cost effectiveness.
Understand cultural context and local factors influencing burden of disease at the national and local levels within Indonesia.
Understand the landscape of population-level data on health and determinants of health in Indonesia, including data systems and the institutions that oversee them.

• Assess data from multiple sources and develop strategies to integrate them in the subnational analyses.
• Under the mentorship of the Project Principle Investigator (PI) and other senior research team staff, they will develop, test, and implement methods and analytical processes necessary for producing results.
• Develop and execute analytic strategies, determining which to test and how best to deploy statistical methods and coding techniques.
• Develop appropriate diagnostic techniques to assess research results and provide critical feedback to project teams.
• Present results for internal and external critique, assess and make recommendations regarding which feedback to incorporate, and potentially run models to formulate final results.
• Along with the other project staff, help lead the development of academic papers, reports, presentations, and similar outputs.

Project management

Transform intellectual agendas set by the PI into action plans that can be implemented effectively across multiple project participants to achieve project milestones.
Effectively participate in project assignments with a solid grounding in project aims, approaches, and current status.
Track progress and manage coordination and communication across the team.
Organize local data sources, gather available data and metadata, and translate from local language for use by project teams in national and subnational burden of disease estimation.
Oversee high quality data collation, cleaning, and integration into the analytic process.
Coordinate needs and actions across multiple teams internally to ensure data access, analyses, and diagnostics are appropriately connected and undertaken efficiently to produce results in a timely manner.
Develop protocols, trainings, presentations, and other resources to help project staff understand local factors influencing disease burden, including changes in administrative structures over time.
Facilitate routine analytic processes and modeling efforts to derive key indicators and estimates based upon set protocols and parameters. 
Monitor, report, and forecast workflow and deadlines through effective portfolio management. 

Engagement and impact

• Build sustainable collaboration with institutions and experts in Indonesia.
• Develop in-depth familiarity with key stakeholders, including their political, intellectual, and financial interests and interrelationships. 
• Understand how decision makers use evidence to develop policies and programs, and to set priorities. 
• Conduct training activities in order to strengthen capacity to interact with and utilize burden of disease estimation in Indonesia.

Facilitate collaborator participation in the analysis and consult with key stakeholders throughout the project
Coordinate and facilitate the gathering of data for national and subnational burden of disease from key stakeholder institutions, including developing necessary agreements, with support of IHME.
Act as the principle point of contact in Indonesia for communication with project staff based at IHME, and liaise with Indonesian experts as needed to respond to inquiries.
Derive relevant conclusions from study results in order to inform policy and priority setting in Indonesia.
Facilitate the presentation of results as actionable evidence for decision makers, including working closely with key institutional partners.
Engage local stakeholders to improve the estimates and to empower them to interpret and use them.

General

• Coordinate closely with IHME faculty and staff, including with the Project Principal Investigator and Network Engagement Team.
• Manage events and meetings, including logistical support and materials creation.
• Perform additional duties as assigned that fall within the reasonable scope of this position as member of the GBD team and of IHME overall. 

Minimum Qualifications:

Masters in epidemiology or related field plus, minimum five years’ related experience or equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Exhibits intellectual agility and a strong aptitude for learning new intellectual content across disciplines in a timely fashion.
• Strong oral and written communication skills in English and Bahasa Indonesian.
• Strong relationship development and relationship management skills in the Indonesian context.
• Strong project management skills, including demonstrated ability take multiple priorities and translate them into project completion through planning.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work across diverse cultural and institutional contexts.
• Works independently, is flexible, and juggles competing priorities.

Conditions of employment:

• This is a 12 month contract, with the potential for extension.
• Evening and weekend work sometimes required.
• International and domestic travel may be required.
• This position is based in Indonesia, ideally Jakarta; residency and authorization to work in Indonesia is required.

How to apply: Email IHMEhr@uw.edu with a cover letter and CV