Kenya

The post-doctoral researcher will be responsible for 1) co-leading a body of work to examine the impact, implementation, and political economy of health facility autonomy reforms in Kenya 2) supporting and contributing to the health economic capacity-building initiatives of the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), 3) Supervision and mentorship of Ph.D. students and research assistants, 4) Contribute and support policy engagement initiatives of HERU, and 5) develop own body of work and mobilize research funding to support their transition to research independence.

The post-doctoral researcher will be responsible for 1) co-leading a body of work in the field of Implementation Science, with a particular focus on Routine Data Systems in Africa, specifically Civil and Vital Registration Services (CRVS) in Kenya 2) supporting and contributing to the capacity-building initiatives of the Population and health impact surveillance group (PHISG), 3) Supervision and mentorship of Ph.D. students and research assistants, 4) Contribute and support policy engagement initiatives of PHISG, and 5) develop own body of work and mobilize research funding to support their transition to research independence.

This role is responsible coordinating surveillance and ensuring all surveillance activities are conducted according to plan and surveillance data are of high quality. 

The post-doctoral researcher will be responsible for:

1) Supporting a body of work focused on examining healthcare priority setting in Kenya the broader East African region,

2) Support institutionalization of health technology assessment in Kenya and the East African region,

3) Conduct health technology assessments in collaboration with government

4) supporting and contributing to the health economics capacity building initiatives of the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), 2) Supervision and mentorship of PhD students and research assistants, 3) Contribute and support policy engagement initiatives of HERU, and 4) develop own body of work and mobilize research funding to support their transition to research independence.

The Clinical Information Network (CIN) is a multi-hospital platform designed to promote better generation and use of paediatric patient data for quality improvement, surveillance, and research. The project seeks a highly motivated clinical specialist who will work with other members of the team towards successful running of a multi-site pragmatic trial on pneumonia treatments and other projects supported on the platform. Selected references that provide additional background to the CIN are provided at the links below: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31544003/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30832678/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29971245/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29514814/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29241618/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26662925/

The Project Manager support the development and delivery of major research grants being conducted. They will work with and need to develop strong relationships with key stakeholders including academic collaborators, external funding partners, and administrative teams of partnering research institutions in Kenya/East Africa and especially in Oxford University. You will need to understand the financial reporting requirements in the KEMRI-Wellcome programme and all its governance arrangements and understand appropriate research funding arrangements. There will be a need to understand all the reporting requirements of project funders and international collaborators. You will be responsible for the details of project management that ensure milestones are met and programs of work remain within budget. 

Post holder will be expected to work in collaboration with operations team members with more specific responsibilities in finance, procurement, human resources and communications.

They will also take primary responsibility for financial, administrative and project milestone reporting working together with a Senior Project Manager in Oxford University and with research Principal and co-Investigators who are grant holders.

The Clinical Information Network (CIN) was initiated in 2013 first to track changes in paediatric quality of care and since 2018 to track quality of inpatient neonatal care. The CIN now involves 19 Kenyan county hospitals and works to help develop improved information on the causes, characteristics and outcomes of neonatal admissions. The team has, over a number of years, developed a variety of metrics on the quality and outcomes of care provided to inpatient new borns with common illnesses. Hospitals in CIN are also now taking part in specific quality of care improvement programmes expected to last 3 or more years and the CIN team is looking for a post-doctoral epidemiologist or statistician to lead the further development of neonatal quality of care metrics and evaluate the changes in quality and outcomes of care over time and place. The CIN neonatal data comprise approximately 20,000 inpatient episodes per year with mortality rates in these wards of over 10%. This unique dataset will provide the post-holder with a unique research opportunity with findings that will be important nationally and globally.

The post-holder will work with a PI and Senior Scientist.

In particular, the CIN management team and the Neonatal group expects the post-holder will lead work (approximately 80% of their time):

• To optimise individual quality of neonatal care measurement indicators, and potentially develop composite indicators for the inpatient neonatal population
• To employ indicators developed to characterise hospitals’ quality of care and explore the variation in quality across hospitals and factors associated with this variation (work will require use of multiple imputation methods)
• To develop and apply time-series top evaluate the effects of health service interventions on the quality of hospital care over time and how this may vary across place & time
• To examine the links between quality of care and mortality at individual patient level

They will also contribute ideas and offer senior support to a large data science and analytics team that supports the paediatric and neonatal network activities that is continuously innovating as the CIN evolves as an example of a learning health system. This aspect of their role will be in a more supervisory role, including as appropriate contributions to PhD and MSc student supervision, and likely include (approximately 20% of their time):

• Contributions to the improvement of data analyses and infographics used to provide hospitals with regular feedback reports on the quality of care they provide
• Providing support to the development and testing of neonatal prognostic scoring tools and their use in case-mix adjustment of mortality outcomes
• Contributing to the development and implementation of new tools for data capture of inpatient and post-discharge growth for babies discharged from New born Units and providing support to more junior team members as these indicators are explored
• To provide support in statistical programming linked to data management of CIN and other projects
• To provide support to hospital-based teams who wish to develop local research reports