Senior Health Economics Analyst, Indonesia

The Senior Analyst (SA) is a budding leader in their technical area of health economics or financing in Indonesia. The SA should also have a health economics or financing background so that they can support the team by providing financing perspectives across our activities.

The SA leverages that expertise to support and conduct high level analysis, generate insights, influence policy and to support program design and execution. The SA is responsible for supporting (on behalf of the Ministry of Health) a consortium to pilot primary health care transformation agenda in Indonesia. The SA is expected to contribute to the development and active dissemination of high-quality technical knowledge products.

The SA works as a key member of the Strategic Purchasing for Primary Health Care (SP4PHC) project, which is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that provides technical assistance to countries to improve how funds are allocated to healthcare providers to achieve the goal of universal health coverage.

In Indonesia, SP4PHC is working with Ministry of Health (MOH) since the late 2022 on supporting the MOH’s Health Transformation agenda, and specifically focusing on reforms around improving PHC, health financing, and digital health across Indonesia. SP4PHC Indonesia is implementing three strategies, which aim to improve how JKN purchases PHC services, optimize flow of funds via districts to PHC providers, and foster integration of telemedicine into purchasing arrangements for PHC services.

SP4PHC has been tasked as a coordinator of MOH-lead PHC consortium at 4 selected districts. The PHC consortium aims to set up a catalytic learning platform where key national and subnational government, universities, and external stakeholders can work together to diagnose and improve purchasing at PHC level within the context of integrated primary care service. Activities under the Consortium will include fund flow tracking, health performance assessment, and capacity building.

To support these strategies, several activities related to the health system, financing, and policy will be carried out. The SA will be a core technical member of the SP4PHC Indonesia team and will report to SP4PHC Country Lead. This is a full-time position based in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Responsibilities

Program design and implementation

• Support sub-national actors in decentralized settings by strengthening capacity to respond to increased autonomy for planning, budgeting and public financial management.
• Produce high quality written reports and presentations, including technical documents, project status reports, policy briefs, and publications for conferences and journals.
• Create graphics and visualizations of quantitative and qualitative data.
• Support team to generate targeted evidence and provide technical support to MOH and BPJS-K on improving JKN and work with these partners to incorporate these findings into policy development and roll-out
• Lead analyses on health expenditure, including out-of-pocket spending, financial forecasting, benefit incidence analysis, resource tracking and cost-effectiveness.
• Support ministries of health and finance on development of national health financing strategies, budget planning, preparation and execution, and budget advocacy.
• Support the design and implementation of health financing mechanisms such as health insurance and performance-based financing.

Research

• Provide quantitative and qualitative data analyses across a range of subjects.
• Data collection and analysis for country research studies. Data collection may entail working closely with stakeholders, such as BPJS-K, Centers of Excellence, and the National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN)
• Conduct desk research including literature reviews, data mining and analysis on relevant technical and policy issues and effectively summarize findings.
• Develop research protocols, including data collection instruments such as surveys and semi-structured interview questionnaires, and support validation of instruments.

Data Management

• Document the research process through Stata .do files or other methods to follow responsible record-keeping practices
• Provide technical advice on how to mitigate risk when working with large datasets, such as accounting for missing data points
• Develop and manage large datasets such as NHA, IDHS, SUSENAS, and BPJS-K claims. This includes cleaning, constructing, sorting, and updating variables.

Project Reporting and Representation

• Occasionally represent ThinkWell with external partners, donors or stakeholders at meetings and events.
• Prepare communications for policy and technical meetings or forums
• Draft or revise sections of donor reports and coordinate team member input.

Project Administration and Operations

• Develop and maintain strong working relations with technical and management units in partner organizations (BPJS-K; MoH; BKKBN; IBI; Bappenas; District Health Offices; and private sector agencies)
• Arrange interviews, discussions, and meetings with various stakeholders related to FP and MNCH and others as required
• Actively participate in virtual discussions with ThinkWell members from other projects and other countries

SP4PHC-Specific Responsibilities:

• Maintain project database of all data, information, reports, technical papers, and publications
• At the direction of the Program Lead, contribute to ThinkWell’s various efforts to support the Government of Indonesia’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak
• Support the Deputy Director of Learning in developing and pursuing learning products, especially exploring research questions and how to address them-
• Contribute to the development of knowledge management systems
• Conduct field monitoring of pilots and liaise with an external third party to monitor and evaluate
• Develop econometric modelling and participate in discussions throughout every step of the data analysis process

Requirements

• A thoughtful systems thinker with grounded, pragmatic understanding of the complexities of our work;
• Tech savvy and skilled at visual display of data;
• Demonstrated experience with health economics, especially in the areas of econometrics research and Indonesian health systems
• Relevant work experience in a management consulting firm, bilateral or multilateral development agency, and/or international NGO, preferably with some experience managing projects in low- or middle-income countries;
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 25%.
• BA/BS (Econ) and 7+ years experience or graduate degree and 5+ years experience;
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to relate respectfully with staff at all levels, ages, genders, nationalities and orientations as well as across work areas;
• Full fluency in English and Bahasa Indonesia;
• Advanced proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint required; proficiency in statistical analysis packages (e.g. STATA) preferred;
• Demonstrated poise and professionalism in engaging with external partners, donors, and stakeholders;
• Demonstrated capacity to configure and analyze data, including from various large datasets such as NHA, IDHS, SUSENAS, RISKASFAS, RISKASDES, and MNCH mortality and morbidity data;
• Exceptional analytical, research and problem solving capabilities;