Senior Policy and Advocacy Advisor - Nigeria Integrated Health Program at Palladium Group

Project Overview and Role

• Nigeria Integrated Health Program is an integrated health program with an expanded effort with the Government of Nigeria (GON) to identify and support rapid scale-up of proven interventions through improvement of service delivery and strengthening of health systems.
• It will focus its support for service delivery in six intervention areas: family planning, malaria, routine immunization, nutrition, maternal/newborn health, and treatment of childhood pneumonia/diarrhea. It has a strong emphasis on monitoring, evaluation and learning.
• This program will work closely with state-level government officials to support established state-level Health and Development Plans, build capacity, and promote ownership of interventions, systems, and results. Specific interventions will need to be tailored to local contexts and will be fully developed at state and Local Government Area (LGA) levels. Through agreements with individual states, its potential breadth is the entire country with an emphasis on the north.

Responsibilities

• Leads the federal advocacy efforts with key stakeholders and facilitates adoption of the idea of an integrated approach to RNMCH services and country ownership in ensuring the decrease of maternal and under-five mortality
• Advocates and facilitates development of supporting policies and regulations as necessary and appropriate
• Provides expertise on gender and social inclusion to support policy development, adjustment, adoption, and implementation
• Coordinates advocacy efforts under the integrated approach with USG partnering projects to ensure value added of such efforts for quality of care, improvements to the national environment as well as questions of access, country ownership, and commitment both at the federal and state levels
• Advocates with federal, state, LGA, and community-level health institutions to raise awareness about their role in improving RMNCH health outcomes
• Promotes integrated approach to improving reproductive, maternal, and child health and to decreasing maternal and under-five mortality
• Advocates with federal and state governments and private sector for increased and sustained financing for family planning, reproductive, maternal, and child health programming
• Performs other related duties and responsibilities as assigned

Requirements

• A Bachelor's degree required and relevant experience in advocacy, policy analysis, gender, women’s  empowerment,  human rights is highly desirable
• Proven coalition building, evidence-based advocacy (not advocacy)
• Knowledge and understanding of the institutional, legal and policy frameworks at national and local level that impact on the status of women in Nigeria
• An influential communicator, with excellent written and verbal skills in both English and Hausa (required)
• Evidence of good analytical and problem solving skills
• Ability to network effectively, with the ability to develop a wide range of relevant contacts
• Comfortable  working within a multi-disciplinary team with the integrated approach to RNMCH+N service delivery