Senior Programme Manager, Global Health Security, Outbreak Response Management

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing equitable use of vaccines in lower-income countries. The Vaccine Alliance brings together implementing country and donor governments, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners. Gavi uses innovative finance mechanisms, including co-financing by recipient countries, to secure sustainable funding and adequate supply of quality vaccines. Since 2000, Gavi has contributed to the immunisation of more than 1 billion children and the prevention of more than 16.2 million future deaths.

Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR) activities have long been a part of Gavi’s core mandate, with multiple teams making investments into countries to strengthen routine immunisation, build resilient sustainable, immunisation systems including the modernisation and scale up of information systems, into preventive programs for high impact epidemic prone diseases (cholera, measles, meningitis, yellow fever, typhoid fever) as well as outbreak response of these diseases plus Ebola.
The attention, importance, and focus has been sharpened following the central role Gavi has taken in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020 Gavi has been co-leading the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), and a global risk-sharing mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The Gavi Secretariat through the COVAX facility will continue to coordinate efforts with global health partners to support countries’ COVID-19 vaccination ambitions through 2023.

THE ROLE

In December 2022, Gavi’s Board approved an evolution of its current 2021-2025 strategy (“Gavi 5.0”) to reflect the changing context in recent years; now articulated as “Gavi 5.1”. Building on the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, Gavi 5.1 recognises the new challenges to global health security and Gavi’s core routine immunisation programs posed by the increasing number of outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases and includes an evolution of the Alliance’s role in PPPR. As outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs), including emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) will only become more likely and frequent in the future, Gavi is building on its current roles and experiences through the establishment of a dedicated Global Health Security (GHS) team and will deepen its engagement in responding to outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics (referred to hence forth as public health events (PHE)) of new and emerging infectious disease pathogens and impact of climate change, building on the existing investments and mechanisms for outbreak response against established high impact epidemic prone diseases. This team will also play an important role in defining the role of Gavi in the 2026-2030 strategic period (Gavi 6.0) in the global health security space.
Under the leadership and direction of the Managing Director for Vaccine Markets and Health Security and the Director of Health Security, the GHS team will:

• Establish Gavi’s Global Health Security function, GHS’ strategy to respond to public health events (PHE) of new and emerging infectious disease pathogens and climate change;
• Lead Gavi Secretariat and Alliance implementation of the strategy, including managing the cross-secretariat and Alliance partners’ coordination and alignment;
• Co-lead Gavi’s strategic engagement with the broader international and regional health security and PPPR architecture and players, with resource mobilisation (RM) and public policy engagement (PPE) teams as appropriate, to enable an effective response, including leveraging Gavi and the Gavi Alliance’s comparative advantages and capabilities that meet countries’ requirements in new and emerging infectious diseases;
• Lead the technical and programmatic aspects of Gavi’s health security work, including pandemic readiness. This will include collaboration and coordination with other Gavi Secretariat teams engaged in programs and activities related to health security and pandemic preparedness, including but not limited to Health Systems and Immunisation Strengthening (HSIS), Vaccine Programmes (VP), Resource Mobilisation, Innovative Finance and Private Sector Partnerships (RM), Public Policy Engagement (PPE), Country Delivery Programs/Covid19 Delivery (CDP), Legal, Policy, Finance, Communications;
• Design, establish, and oversee an end-to-end view and coordination within the Gavi Secretariat and with Alliance partners for tools and activities in rapid response to a range of epidemic/pandemic scenarios in which vaccines are one of the effective countermeasures of a multisectoral pandemic response. This is necessary to sustain and continue evolving Gavi’s approach to health security and response considering the evolving global health architecture and Gavi’s comparative advantage;
• Establish the role of Gavi in the global health security space in the 2026-2030 strategic period, building on Gavi 5.1 strategic goals and accomplishments.

The Senior Manager for Gavi Outbreak Response is critical member of the new Global Health Security team, responsible for setting up, overseeing and managing the Gavi Secretariat’s responses to outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics for new and emerging infectious diseases. This includes working across Secretariat, collaborating with Alliance and other partners to drive and enable Gavi’s interventions and response. Success depends on effective, rapid, adaptive, and transparent project management, coordination, and taking appropriate decisions – including enabling decision making across teams within the Secretariat as well as Alliance and other partners who will be implementing the different aspects of the response.

MAIN DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the design and implementation of an approach to prioritise and decide on Gavi’s appropriate level of involvement in different public health events (PHE) to accelerate vaccine access and protect routine immunisation; this may entail alignment with the established Vaccine Investment Strategy Epidemics Framework. This involves formalising the governance and decision-making steps, funding sources, pathways and processes, leveraging Gavi and partner experts to address technical aspects;
• Lead the development and establishment of approach, tools and mechanisms for PHE response across Gavi Secretariat teams – including as appropriate, Market Shaping (MS), Vaccine Programmes (VP), Resource Mobilisation (RM), Health System Strengthening (HSS), Country Programmes Delivery (CPD), Public Policy Engagement (PPE), Governance, Executive Office, and Strategy. This includes :
  • aligning on the development of relevant tools that Gavi and Alliance Partners can/ might deploy in response to different kinds of outbreaks in line with Gavi’s comparative advantages. This includes pre-positioning of funding and other governance approvals, and other activities such as securing supply via advanced contracting, to enable timely responses to PHE;
  • establishing rapid partner coordination mechanisms with the partners in the GHS architecture, defining roles and responsibilities and tool deployment decisions.
• Lead the PHE response by setting objectives, defining the high-level operational plan, in collaboration with appropriate cross Secretariat teams, including:
  • building, leading and project managing coordinated response teams to outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemics of new and emerging infectious disease;
  • assembling and heading up, a multi-function-team outbreak response team.
• Serve as focal point to manage and coordinate Alliance partner pandemic response team relationships, setting up mechanisms for information sharing, and joint work to coordinate outbreak response;
• Serve as core point of contact with internal and external technical stakeholders to monitor the external environment (e.g., IHR committees convened, WHE/R&D Blueprint, Country reports/declarations, etc.) to track potential PHEs;
• Coordinate ongoing monitoring efforts with Senior Specialist on Monitoring and Data, and Measurement, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) to reflect on, build, and learn from scenarios, and refine and adapt how Gavi and Alliance partners including countries approach preparedness and response to future PHE;
• Will report to Head of GHS and support her/him in her/his role on advocacy, global representation, coordination within the Secretariat, updating the Gavi Board and other governance bodies and other overarching functions of the GHS team;
• Other duties will be assigned consistent with the team’s needs.

Note: The essential functions listed in this section are not exhaustive of the job responsibilities; other duties may be assigned consistently with the department needs.

QUALIFICATIONS

ACADEMIC

• Advanced university degree in epidemiology, public health, health economics, development or related field, or other relevant qualification.

WORK EXPERIENCE

• Minimum of 8 years of professional work experience in global health and/or health emergencies at the national, regional, or global level in the multilateral, public sector, for-profit or NGO with experience in the fields of health policy outbreak and pandemic preparedness and response, vaccines, or other health products challenges in resource-limited settings;
• Demonstrated operational track record of excellence in achieving results;
• Demonstrated track record for thriving and working in outbreaks, epidemic and/or pandemic response – rapidly changing environment, high uncertainty, multiple considerations;
• Multilateral partner experience, including collaboration and influence at senior levels;
• Track record bringing together and effectively working with multiple stakeholders in complex environments to achieve common goals;
• Experience in vaccines and coordinating emergency responses an advantage;
• Experience/expertise in one or more areas of emerging infectious diseases, epidemiology, vaccine procurement, in-country cold chain, product delivery an advantage.

SKILLS/COMPETENCIES

• Drive for results:
  • Entrepreneurial: takes ownership and initiative, and makes things happen;
  • Execution and delivery-oriented; meet deadlines;
  • Track record in leading a response, problem solving, and course correcting as hurdles arise;
  • Commits to organisational goals.
• Analytical
  • Excellent quantitative and qualitative analysis skills.
• Strategic:
  • Proven ability to develop strategic approaches and follow through to implementation with diverse collaborators;
  • Proven experience in scenario planning.
• Collaboration:
  • Demonstrated ability to manage projects and generate impact and results across institutional and team boundaries, establish harmonious working relationships, and utilise expertise of colleagues in a productive way;
  • Demonstrated experience of working in and delivering through multi-partner environments and experience of delivering results through a matrix-style management structure;
  • Ability to facilitate workshops and build consensus when leading large groups with competing priorities;
  • Effective relationship building and diplomacy skills.
• Communication and stakeholder management:
  • Effective written and verbal communication skills in English with demonstrated ability to synthesise complex issues into effective oral and written materials and attention to detail;
  • High level of persuasive communication and presentation skills, including sophisticated PowerPoint and storyboarding skills;
  • Ability to manage stakeholders at all levels, including senior level stakeholders;
  • Demonstrated capacity to successfully manage situations of considerable complexity and/or political sensitivity.
• Be positive, resilient, and proactive as well as thrive in highly dynamic environment and needing to act under uncertainty.

LANGUAGES

• Fluent English is required;
• French is an asset.

CONTACTS

• All Gavi Secretariat teams;
• Vaccine and Pharmaceuticals Industry;
• World Health Organisation, World Health Emergencies, R&D Blueprint;
• The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI);
• Regional organisations, e.g., African CDC;
• BARDA, other R&D funding and implementing organisations;
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;
• UNICEF;
• Donors;
• CSOs;
• The World Bank.