Senior Programme Manager, Global Health Security, Capabilities for PPPR

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

Please note this is a temporary role, until 31 December, 2025.
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 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 Programme Manager, Global Health Security, Capabilities for PPPR is an anchor position on the newly established GHS team. This Senior Programme Manager is responsible for coordinating and leading cross function and cross partner work to establish and support the implementation of the vaccine operational plans across Alliance and other global and regional vaccine partners and Gavi’s PPPR “playbook” with capabilities, processes, and resources required for preparing for and responding to future PHEs. Both the plans and the playbook build on the experience and lessons from COVAX, recommendations from evaluations and Gavi Alliance’s responses to previous outbreaks. This Senior Manager will work together with multiple Secretariat teams, including Vaccine Programs (VP), Market Shaping (MS), Policy, Public Policy Engagement (PPE), Resource Mobilisation (RM), Health System Strengthening (HSS), Country Programmes Delivery (CPD). The Manager supports the Managing Director and Head of GHS in the establishment of and representation of Gavi's positions and voice within the rapidly evolving Global Health Security architecture.

MAIN DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead development of a Vaccine Response PPPR “Playbook”, a collection of documents that capture and collate the experience and learnings from prior Gavi work and pandemics in an actionable “playbook” format, laying out a range of interventions for future outbreaks, pandemic of new and emerging infectious diseases:
o Codify internal response plans and processes that were setup during COVAX with appropriate learnings/ next steps (incl. organisational set up – within the secretariat and across partners – HR surge plan, etc.);
o Project manage, support, and work with relevant teams, technical leads, and Alliance partners – ensuring learning from COVAX and C-19 – to build, enhance, improve, the pandemic toolkits across the Secretariat and the Alliance to enable earlier access to vaccines, timely delivery support, routine immunisation protection.
• Ensure cross Secretariat and Alliance partner efforts to codify key Gavi and Alliance mechanisms and platforms (with inclusion of experience and learnings, adaptations for future use cases), including but not limited to:
o dose sharing platform;
o indemnity and liability and no-fault compensation funds;
o approaches and mechanisms in humanitarian setting to access and supply doses to populations of concern;
o seed and surge contingent financing mechanisms;
o approaches to securing early, real time doses’
o equity-based allocation approaches.
• Liaise with Policy and other secretariat teams to ensure coherence with internal GAVI policy approaches e.g., Vaccine Investment Strategy (VIS) and Fragile, Emergencies and Displaced Population Policy (FED), with Resource Mobilisation and their approach do donors and financial institutions, with Public Policy Engagement on advocacy and stakeholder partnerships, with Market Shaping on regional and diversification of manufacturing initiatives;
• Collaborate with Gavi Alliance partners and other key partners (e.g. CEPI, Regional partners) to define and establish roles and responsibilities in the next PHE for a holistic, Alliance-wide global vaccine response plan, with the added goal of improving coordination and ways of working based on the experience, learnings from recent pandemic and other PHEs;
• Support the Senior Manager for Outbreaks Response on the coordination and implementation of the playbook strategies as relevant for the specific PHE;
• Support the Head of GHS on advocacy and global representation in coordination with the PPE, RM, and other teams within the Secretariat, on progress updates to 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 public health, social science, health economics, development, or related field, or other relevant qualification.

WORK EXPERIENCE

• Minimum of 8 years of professional global health work experience at regional or global levels in a multilateral agency, government, for-profit consultancy or health industry, NGO sectors with experience in global health security, pandemic preparedness and response in vaccines or other medical countermeasures or other complex health policy challenge;
• Demonstrated operational track record of excellence in achieving results;
• Multilateral partner experience, including at senior levels;
• Track record bringing together multiple stakeholders in complex environments to achieve common goals;
• Developing country experience an advantage.

SKILLS/COMPETENCIES

• Drive for results:
o Entrepreneurial: takes ownership and initiative, and makes things happen;
o Execution and delivery-oriented; meets deadlines;
o Commits to organisational goals.
• Excellent project management skills;
• Analytical:
o Excellent quantitative and qualitative analysis skills.
• Strategic:
o Proven ability to develop strategic approaches and follow through to implementation with diverse collaborators.
• Collaboration:
o Demonstrated ability to work across institutional or team boundaries, establish harmonious working relationships, and utilise expertise of colleagues in a productive way;
o Demonstrated experience of working in and delivering through multi-partner environments and experience of delivering results through a matrix-style management structure;
o Ability to facilitate workshops and find common ground when leading large groups with competing priorities.
• Communication and stakeholder management:
o High level of persuasive and effective written and verbal communication and presentation skills, including sophisticated PowerPoint and storyboarding skills;
o Ability to manage stakeholders at all levels, including senior level stakeholders;
o Experience preparing papers and managing governance, boards;
o Demonstrated capacity to successfully manage situations of considerable complexity and political sensitivity.
• Excellent diplomatic skills and political and cultural sensitivity to engage with various stakeholders, including developing country governments;
• Be positive, agile, and proactive, and flexible, to thrive in a highly dynamic environment where and to act under uncertainty.

LANGUAGES

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

CONTACTS

• Gavi Secretariat;
• Vaccine and Pharmaceuticals Industry;
• World Health Organisation;
• The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations;
• UNICEF;
• The World Bank;
• Donors;
• Civil society;
• Regional bodies, e.g. AU, PAHO.