Senior Program Officer, Disease Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness Advocacy

Position description

Your Role

The Senior Program Officer will lead advocacy and agenda setting to support global coordination on disease surveillance, and align global funding sources to enable countries to build and maintain surveillance systems that address both long-standing global health challenges and potential pandemic needs. You’ll help to build a shared vision for strengthening disease surveillance across key internal partners, global health agencies, governments and other collaborators; align funding and incentives to implement key technical elements of this vision including foundational health metrics, multi-pathogen platforms; and lead investments in data integration & use that help make surveillance information integrated, timely, and actionable for public health decisions. In addition, the post holder will be the primary focal point for external engagement on pandemic preparedness policy and funding, with a particular focus on the intersection of pandemic preparedness and surveillance. This is a full-time role with benefits located in the foundation’s headquarters in Seattle, WA. Domestic or international relocation package is available for candidates with US work authorization.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and implement an agenda setting and engagement strategy that strengthens alignment of donor and global health agency funding and policies to support stronger disease surveillance systems that provide integrated, timely, and actionable information for public health decision-makers;
• Develop, negotiate, and lead a portfolio of investments to support national, regional and global agenda setting and partner engagement around surveillance, including all related grant making processes (e.g., research and analysis, investment reviews, strategic alignment, grantee engagement, etc.);
• Conceptualize, support, or lead high impact coalitions and policy-related partnerships, e.g. supporting the foundation’s involvement in the Global Wastewater Surveillance Consortium;
• Develop policy positions and engage in global policy discussions on surveillance, pandemic preparedness, and global health security on behalf of the foundation as relevant.
• Represent the foundation to external constituencies in both the public and private sector, including in civil society, governments, and global health institutions. This could include formal and informal presentations such as making speeches, attending conferences, committee representation and other meetings;
• Produce high-quality and informative written briefings, reports, email updates, and other materials on key issues for foundation colleagues and leadership;
• Serve as the GPA lead for the Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness initiatives, including leading key relationships across GPA and with other internal teams across the foundation working on integrated disease surveillance, including the Pneumonia and Pandemic preparedness team (PPP); Enterics, Diagnostics, Genomics and Epidemiology (EDGE); relevant disease-specific technical teams, like our Polio team; the Global Health Agencies and Funds (GHAF) team; and our Africa Regional Office (ARO);
• Ability to travel up to 25% domestically and internationally.

Your Experience

• Advanced degree in a relevant subject coupled with relevant work experience in the field;
• Extensive knowledge of global health ecosystem, public health surveillance specifically, and global health financing;
• Strong and demonstrated understanding of the role of advocacy and communications efforts to increase awareness of global health and development issues and shape political and financial support for health and development goals in the low- and middle-income countries with governmental and non-state organizations, ideally with some experience in Sub-Saharan Africa;
• Demonstrable experience and networks within the global health sector;
• Political savvy and clear track record of devising and implementing advocacy campaigns;
• Strong analytical and writing skills for communicating with a broad and diverse audience;
• Excellent communication and relationship management abilities enabling work with multiple internal and external collaborators;
• Comfort in a wide range of cultural, geographic, and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior with a diverse range of people;
• Comfort with working in a dynamic context with a level of ambiguity;
• Effective collaboration in complex internal and external organizations and partnerships;
• Extensive project contribution and management experience;
• English language required.

Application instructions

Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on globalvacancies.org