Senior Associate - Country Support - Mental Health

Overview

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication, and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Team Overview

CHAI's Mental Health program is one of the organization's newest programs, sitting within our Innovation cluster. Through CHAI’s Mental Health Access Initiative (MHAI), it works to expand access to affordable, quality-assured psychotropic medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. Severe mental health conditions account for a disproportionate share of the global mental health burden, yet more than 90 percent of people with psychosis in LMICs receive no minimally adequate care.

Following a year of pathfinding work with Ministries of Health, regulators, procurement agencies, clinicians, and people with lived experience, the program has secured multi-year funding to scale. It addresses five interconnected barriers that keep effective, off-patent medicines from reaching patients: product availability and registration, constrained financing, fragmented procurement and weak forecasting, volatile pricing and unreliable supply, and reduced prescribing and distorted demand. The program is currently active in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, and is expanding to six focus countries with the addition of Ghana and a sixth country to be selected.

MHAI is the largest part of CHAI's mental health portfolio, which extends beyond medicines access and beyond MHAI's own focus countries. This role may involve supporting that wider program as well. The program is delivered jointly by CHAI country teams and a small global team, and works closely with CHAI's Global Markets Team, which leads the organization's market shaping work.

Position Overview

The majority of MHAI's work sits at the country level, with CHAI country teams. This role exists to support our overall program model. Reporting to the Program Lead, Mental Health, the Senior Associate, Country Support will be the day-to-day link between the global mental health team and country teams across the program's six focus countries, working in close collaboration with the global team's country engagement lead, with the countries divided between them.

CHAI is seeking a highly motivated, mission-driven Senior Associate to help drive the success of this initiative across sub-Saharan Africa. The successful candidate joins a nascent program at the point where it moves from proving a model to delivering it at scale. They will work alongside Ministries of Health, regulators, procurement agencies, and manufacturers on a problem that has been neglected for decades.

The mandate for this role is broad and likely to include program management, thought partnership, and planning and execution support across MHAI’s six country teams, and possibly on other mental health programs. We are looking for a generalist — someone who joins dots across workstreams, reads situations well, and communicates clearly in writing, in conversation and on a slide.

Responsibilities

Country team partnership and delivery support (40%)

• Serve as the primary day-to-day point of contact between CHAI’s global mental health team and country teams across the focus countries.
• Provide hands-on, timely support and feedback to country teams on objective and key result tracking, work planning, analysis, materials preparation, fundraising activities, and delivery against program milestones and the program’s monitoring and evaluation framework.
• Travel regularly to focus countries to work alongside country teams, including during workshops, government engagements and periods of peak delivery.
• Develop a working understanding of the programmatic, political and operational constraints each country team faces, and be able to articulate them accurately to others.
• Build and maintain relationships with in-country stakeholders, including Ministries of Health and procurement agencies, alongside the country teams who hold those relationships primarily.
• Identify where additional resources are needed and mobilize to fill the gap.

Communication and coordination (25%)

• Communicate effectively across a matrixed, international organization, streamlining requests and deliverables between internal global and country teams, and synthesizing priorities between external stakeholders such as funders and governments.
• Synthesize country progress, insight, and evidence into materials for funders, partners, the public, and CHAI leadership, representing country realities accurately.
• Articulate, internally and externally, how in-country work connects to program-level strategy, funder commitments and decisions being taken globally.
• Prepare program updates, presentations, and briefing materials for internal and external audiences.

Program management and delivery tracking (25%)

• Support annual and quarterly planning cycles with country teams, including objective setting and milestone definition.
• Track progress against country work plans, objectives, and key results; flag risks to delivery early and propose mitigations.
• Coordinate across CHAI global teams and external partners to align workstreams and avoid duplication.
• Support grant management and reporting requirements in coordination with program leadership.
• Foster a strong team culture based on CHAI's values, contributing to a cohesive and productive matrixed team across the country and global teams.

Cross-country learning (10%)

• Capture lessons learned and best practices, and facilitate cross-country and cross-program exchange through briefs, convenings and regular calls, including dissemination to external audiences where appropriate.
• Adapt country-specific tools, templates, and approaches into resources other teams can use.
• Other responsibilities as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 5+ years of relevant professional experience.
• Demonstrated ability to build trusted working relationships with colleagues and external stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills, including the ability to structure an ambiguous problem, build and interpret quantitative and qualitative analyses, and draw out what matters.
• Demonstrated ability to learn quickly, connect the dots, and translate technical knowledge into actionable insight for decision-makers.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to produce clear, compelling slides for both internal and external audiences.
• Ability to work independently, set priorities and manage multiple workstreams in a decentralized, multicultural environment.
• Experience in capacity building, mentorship, and working with remote or decentralized teams.
• Comfort moving between hands-on delivery support and senior external engagement, with no task considered too small.
• Exceptional attention to detail.
• Willingness and ability to travel 20-40%, including to settings where travel logistics can be demanding.
• English language fluency, both written and verbal.

Advantages

• Experience working within a CHAI country team, or within a country-based team at a comparable organization.
• Experience in a resource-constrained, high-autonomy environment where roles are not narrowly defined.
• Familiarity with pharmaceutical access, regulatory, procurement, supply chain or health financing in LMICs.
• Experience working with Ministries of Health or other government partners.
• Experience supporting donor reporting and funder engagement.
• Master's degree in public health, public policy, business, economics or a related field.
• French language proficiency.
• Interest in, or exposure to, mental health.

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