Director, Health Financing

 Please note that all Last Mile Health offices will be closed from December 25, 2024 to January 1, 2025 for our annual organization-wide break. During this time, our Talent Acquisition team will have limited capacity to respond to inquiries or provide updates on applications. We encourage you to go ahead and submit your application, and we’ll review it as soon as possible when we return to the office.

This role was posted on December 18, 2024. Please note that we will review applications on a rolling basis.

The Role

At Last Mile Health (LMH), we are all stewards of our reputation and our resources. Do you have progressive experience in providing technical guidance and support as needed on country-specific health financing agendas? If so then you may be our next Director, Health Financing.

Last Mile Health’s Health Systems Strengthening (HSS) team is a multidisciplinary team that partners with our country teams to design, scale, strengthen, and sustain government-led community health systems and amplify that work globally. The Health Financing practice within the HSS team builds Last Mile Health’s knowledge base and skill sets to collect and use health financing data, conduct analyses, and generate learnings to mobilize resources and strengthen the financing of community health systems at the country and global levels.

The Director, Health Financing (HF) will lead our HF team globally to support and advise our country teams as they engage and work with Ministries of Health and partners in the area of community health financing. This role involves strategic leadership, portfolio execution, and partnership development to advance community health financing across Africa.

This role is hybrid in Ghana and open to national and international candidates located in or willing to relocate to Accra, Ghana.

What You’ll Do

Strategic Oversight, Leadership, and Planning

• Develop the vision, strategy and roadmap for the HSS Health Finance portfolio, ensuring the articulation of long-term goals of the Practice and managing the necessary steps to achieve them.
• Lead the development of Last Mile Health’s technical approach to health financing, aligning global best practices with local adaptation to country programs and the Africa Frontline First (AFF) initiative. Collaborate with program teams to advise, design and implement targeted, context-specific health financing strategies and work plans. 
• Provide technical guidance and support as needed on country-specific health financing agendas, including supporting annual and quarterly work planning processes, and drafting detailed strategies and implementation frameworks to review and address systemic health financing gaps.
• Provide strategic leadership to strengthen sustainable financing pathways for community health systems, in alignment with the Building Integrated Readiness for Community Health (BIRCH) program in partnership with Global Fund across 17 countries. This will include developing long-term financing plans, aligning external and domestic investments with national health strategies and addressing identified resource gaps. Drive evidence-based financial solutions to optimize health outcomes, ensure resilience, and contribute to equitable, gender-transformative health systems in LMH countries. 
• Provide technical expertise to identify, prioritize and select high-impact opportunities for health financing engagements, ensuring alignment with LMH’s HSS HF programmatic goals.
• Travel to LMH operational countries (and any other countries) to undertake work activities including representation of the HSS team and LMH and represent LMH in national and global forums to foster partnerships.
• Spearhead health finance working groups as necessary providing thought leadership and fostering collaboration across teams.

Strengthen and Lead the Health Finance Teams

• Provide analytical guidance and technical review of health financing technical products to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and institutionalization of community health systems. 
• Provide community health financing technical leadership by writing reports, creating tools and standard operating processes to ensure that health finance outputs across LMH are of high quality and impact-oriented. 
• Establish and maintain project management systems for efficient and consistent reporting of health finance efforts across the organization. Develop, implement and monitor team activities, work plans, and budgets
• Define clear accountabilities linked to team and organizational objectives on portfolio progress. Regularly report on portfolio progress, identify risks and challenges, and collaborate with stakeholders to resolve barriers. 
• Manage direct reports and other health financing staff, ensuring delivery of portfolio goals. Provide quality assurance, technical direction, leadership, and oversight to working teams.
• Foster a culture of equity, inclusion, learning, and results orientation within health financing teams, ensuring alignment with organizational values and priorities.
• Offer coaching, mentoring, and joint learning opportunities to build the technical capacity of health finance staff within LMH country programs and AFF. Identify and address skill gaps to strengthen team capabilities.
• Participate in team building and strengthening activities including capacity-building engagements that involve the HSS team
• Facilitate the sharing of technical expertise and institutional knowledge through structured mentoring and capacity-building initiatives to ensure the sustainability of health financing expertise in the LMH country program.

Partnerships

• Cultivate relationships with key stakeholders related to our health financing work, represent LMH externally, and bring an understanding of health financing in the context of other influence and advocacy agendas.
• Actively contribute to grant proposal development and review, ensuring alignment with strategic health financing priorities and technical rigour in submissions. 
• Lead internal discussions around health financing to advance LMH’s technical expertise. Collaborate on external-facing materials, including reports, briefs, and presentations, to promote LMH’s impact and thought leadership in health financing.
• Develop, manage and nurture priority partnerships, working collaboratively with internal teams and external stakeholders to advance LMH’s health financing agenda and ensure alignment with programmatic goals.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor’s Degree, PhD or Masters degree in economics, public health, public policy, or related fields desirable 
• Progressive experience in economics, health economics, public policy, public sector financing, or public health, in partnership with government counterparts or other policymakers, economics, and health systems strengthening is required.
• Experience and knowledge related to the technical components of health financing (e.g., costing and cost-effectiveness analysis, resource mobilization, strategic purchasing, national health accounts exercises, resource mapping).
• Experience working effectively with governments in a technical advisory role, especially developing research or other communications materials for policymakers.
• Experience working with major donors, knowledge of funding cycles and proposal development.
• Quantitative analysis experience and skills, especially experience using standard costing tools and developing costing exercises are preferred.
• Direct experience in health policy analysis in low-and-middle-income countries, or resource-limited settings is preferred.

You’ll Impress Us If

• Mission-driven with a commitment to health and social justice.
• Demonstrated ability to multi-task in a time-sensitive manner.
• Adaptability and flexibility to respond to evolving priorities and challenges in a fast paced environment.
• Strong problem solving skills, resilience and the capacity to thrive under pressure while maintaining focus on delivering sustainable and impactful health financing solutions. 
• Fluent in English and excellent verbal, and written communication skills. Fluency in French is preferred but not mandatory.
• Advanced experience with major office applications and proficiency with data management and analysis tools. 
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills; ability to interface with diverse stakeholders in a range of multi-disciplinary settings.
• Solid project management skills and experience, ability to multitask and bring robust time-management skills in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience working in complex environments and ability to prioritize to meet tight timelines.

Compensation Information

At Last Mile Health, we strive to reward our employees equitably and transparently. This means that we pay our employees based on a clear and consistent methodology and without regard to their identity or personal relationships. We have made this model fully transparent so that everyone has access to all information related to compensation. We hope this helps you better understand Last Mile Health’s values and commitments to our employees. We look forward to answering any questions you may have during the hiring process.

Before applying to this role, please take a moment to learn more about our approach to compensation and how compensation works in each of the countries where we operate. Please find the link to our compensation model and benefits overview below:

OVERVIEW OF LAST MILE HEALTH’S COMPENSATION MODEL

Compensation for this position: 

The Band for this position: SLB-5

The salary range for this role is $90,966- $113,018 USD dependent upon experience doing an equivalent role. Please note that this compensation is subject to statutory taxes.
For more information about benefits for International staff, kindly refer to page 21 of Last Mile Health Compensation Model. For National staff kindly refer to the Ghana benefits overview.

About Last Mile Health

Last Mile Health partners with governments to design, scale, strengthen, and sustain high-quality community health systems, which empower teams of community and frontline health workers to bring life-saving primary healthcare to the world’s most remote communities. LMH is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.lastmilehealth.org.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and value diversity at LMH. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.