Deputy Health Program Manager – Technical

Position: Deputy Health Program Manager-Technical

Location: Gaziantep, Türkiye

Reports to: NW SyriaHealth Program Manager

Duration: 12 months

About RI: 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 15 countries around the world, including some of the most fragile: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, 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 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:

The deputy Health program manager –Technical will be responsible for the overall technical guidance and quality assurance of all health and nutrition program activities implemented in NWS. The post holder will report to the NWS health program manager, and will work closely with the program implementation team and Whole of Syria (WOS) Health Advisor to ensure that the health & nutrition programs are implemented as per international and national guidelines and meet high quality standards. The post holder will actively participate in the strategic planning, coordination and implementation and monitoring & evaluation of health and nutrition program. She/he will be responsible for the management and capacity building of the health technical teams in Türkiye and the service providers in NWS. This is a senior position with overall technical and quality assurance responsibility.

Position Duties and Responsibilities:

Technical Direction and Strategy

• Provide strategic and technical direction to ensure successful implementation of RI health and nutrition program in NWS from technical health perspective. This includes contributing to RI strategies (technical health unit specific and RI strategies)
• Participate in the design of the health sector contingency plan as part of wider preparedness and adaptive management plans.
• Ensure that early warning systems and contingency plans are in place for investigation and control of outbreaks of infectious diseases and other health issues of concern.
• Advise on proper utilization of standards for emergency response during crisis and provide technical guidance to the emergency response team in the field.
• In coordination with technical leads of country clusters and health & nutrition coordinators, develop a strategic technical plan per health component including but not limited to Primary Health Care, Secondary Health Care, Reproductive Health, community health, nutrition, and mental health
• In coordination with the line manager and Program Manager, review new health related initiatives by the program department to ensure feasibility from a technical and strategic points of view.

Program Development and Quality

• Continuous monitoring of the health situation and analyze health needs of affected populations in Syria; and prioritize the needs that should be met by RI programs.
• Take the lead in providing technical input in concept notes and proposal development process in line with health strategy and general RI strategic objectives.
• Ensure that health programming incorporates cross-cutting themes, such as but not limited to gender, disability, child protection, etc.
• Provide technical support in developing and program management tools such as log-frames, workplans, indicator tracking table and monitoring tools to support implementation.
• Setting quality benchmarks that can evaluate the services quality, service providers’ capacity, and the project objectives.
• Produce periodical technical analysis that can provide meaningful insights about the health services which can guide the program implementation towards more efficiency and quality.
• In coordination with Hub Leader and the Deputy Hub Leader, proactively explore funding or strategic development opportunities for RI with various.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting

• Oversee and support close monitoring of the implementation of the delivered health services by RI-supported health facilities according to international standards and scope of work.
• Provide technical guidance and support to program and MEAL teams to effectively monitor health & nutrition programs and integrate findings and recommendations to improve program quality
• Develop/ Adapt appropriate monitoring and evaluation tools and train health & MEAL teams on their appropriate use.
• Conduct regular monitoring visit to health & nutrition activities inside Syria including capacity building of health & nutrition teams inside Syria, when it’s possible.
• Support NWS field teams to assess status of health services, quality of supply and facilities, and on-site health information systems, in accordance with RI and international standards and policies
• Participate in the monthly, quarterly, interim, and final donors reports, and provide a technical review for the produced reports.
• Establish and maintain health technical information sharing platform accessible to RI staff and health facilities to facilitate capacity building, behavior change communication, and overall technical guidance.
• Ensure regular monitoring of pharma handling across the entire pharma supply chain (both internally and externally), including but not limited to adherence to the pharma management standards, prescription standards, etc.

Partnerships and Coordination

• Represent the technical components of RI health and nutrition programs in cluster meetings in coordination with relevant departments.
• Proactively engage with UN Health Cluster and various technical working groups to position RI as Health sector leading organization from strategic and technical perspectives.
• Maintain regular communication with NWS local stakeholders and local authorities active in health sector and focal points in RI supported health facilities to generate innovative methods of health system strengthening.
• In coordination with advocacy focal points, proactively engage in advocacy messaging within/among relevant coordination platforms/stakeholders.
• In coordination with various internal and external stakeholders lead establishment of effective referral mechanisms.

Capacity Building and training

• Participate in assessing the status of current health program, structure, functions, and standards and advise a health program quality improvement plan.
• Propose capacity building activities aimed at enhancing skills of local health providers in delivery of health services.
• Review the structure of the health unit and periodically map out the staffing needs in alignment with program size and any expansion or reduction.
• Set individual capacity building goals/indicators for team members and set regular meetings to review work plans and deliverables.
• Provide regular capacity building activities to ensure understanding and harmonization of health sector standards across various NW Syria Hub departments and staff.

Safeguarding

• Uphold and promote RI’s commitment to ensuring the safeguarding and safety of the vulnerable communities we serve.
• Consistent with RI’s safeguarding and protection policies, ensure all people who come into contact with Relief International are as safe as possible.

Qualifications & Requirements:

• University degree on Medicine with master’s in Public Health, International health, or other related fields
• Minimum of five years professional experience in implementing emergency health and nutrition programs, preferably in a conflict setting
• Strong understanding of and considerable experience in technical issues around both clinical medicine and public health at primary and secondary health care.
• Strong knowledge about donors regulations and technical standards specifically BHA, ECHO, and UNFPA.
• Extensive experience in providing technical assistance to public health service providers in remote conflict setting.
• Excellent analytical skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, public speaking, and strategic planning skills required.
• Awareness about NWS context, local dynamics, and the health services governing entities.
• English and Arabic languages speaking and writing are required.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines, tasks efficiently
• Excellent time management skills and resourcefulness with strong attention to details

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Relief International is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Relief International (RI) is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to RI’s Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct e-learning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

RI 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

Relief International is committed to protecting our staff and the communities we work with from abuse and harm including sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and sexual harassment.

All staff are expected to abide by our Code of Conduct.

RI Has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behavior that violates its code of conduct, including sexual harassment, exploitation, abuse, as well as lack of integrity, corruption, and fraud. RI also adheres to strict safeguarding principles.