The Role
At Last Mile Health, we make bold commitments that inspire innovation. Do you have experience working alongside Ministries of Health to accelerate program quality and impact? If so, you might be an excellent fit for the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) Specialist role.
Working in close partnership with the Ministry of Health and Population of Malawi, Last Mile Health (LMH) is supporting the government to implement the National Community Health Strategy. Reporting to the Director of Programs, the MERL Specialist will provide flexible support to the Malawi team around data quality, analysis and learning through data feedback loops to improve program quality and support coordination at the district and national levels.
What You’ll Do
- Provide technical expertise and design support to develop integrated program supervision tools and processes for national and district level actors within the community health system.
- In partnership with the Ministry of Health, support efforts to strengthen operationalization of the National Community Health Strategy to achieve outcomes-driven programmatic design.
- Collaborate with the digital health team to support the development of digital data collection systems.
- Lead the development and implementation of a robust Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) plan for work in Malawi, and use data to inform progress towards achieving program milestones and targets.
- Oversee all aspects of data-related activities, including: design of data collection tools, collect and/or oversee data collection, conduct quality assurance audits, analyze data, and disseminate findings.
- Support other teams at Last Mile Health to effectively communicate data from the Malawi program, for instance providing inputs for quarterly, annual, and ad hoc reports.
- Support the development of a Malawi research strategy, including literature reviews, study design, and management of research development.
- Collaborate with global and Malawi-based teams to support development of logic models and theories of change related to short and long term program strategy in Malawi.
What You’ll Bring
- Master’s degree in public health, epidemiology, demography, biostatistics, or related field.
- Several years of work experience, with demonstrated expertise in monitoring and evaluation to support health system design and performance management.
- Demonstrated experience developing indicators, developing data collection tools, overseeing data collection, and leading data quality initiatives.
- Demonstrated experience leading statistical analyses and reporting results to leadership through presentations and reports.
- Demonstrated experience with quality improvement.
- Proficiency using Excel (data cleaning, pivot tables, basic formulas, descriptive statistics, data visualization).
- Experience with statistical analysis software (e.g., STATA, R, SPSS), DHIS2, and SQL preferred.
- Demonstrated success in using data to support and advocate with high-level officials and stakeholders in managing policy and/or government compliance.
- Background in qualitative and quantitative research methods.
- Project management experience in the private or public sector, with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership, including living and working in resource-limited setting, ideally in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Track record of consensus building and managing relationships with a range of stakeholders across sectors.
- Available for up to 25% domestic and some international travel.
- Experience in community health or global health settings.
- Eagerness to take on new tasks and challenges as our scope in Malawi expands.
You’ll Impress Us If
- You have an advanced understanding of community health systems.
- You have developed evaluation plans for community health worker systems.
- You speak Chichewa.
- You have experience living and working in remote or hard-to-reach communities, especially in Malawi.
More Information
- Job City Lilongwe
