Economist (ETC)

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. Visit www.worldbank.org.

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) is a multi-donor partnership that supports low and middle-income countries to understand, manage, and reduce their risks from natural hazards and climate change. It results from a partnership between the World Bank, United Nations, bilateral donors and recipient countries under the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) system to support the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The Sendai Framework is the primary international agreement for disaster reduction. Its principal goal is to effectively integrate, in a coherent manner, disaster risk considerations into sustainable development policies, planning, programming, and financing at all levels of government.

Established in 2006, GFDRR is uniquely positioned to scale the resilience agenda in these countries by providing funding and expertise for policy advice on improving disaster risk management (DRM) at national and local levels, as it relates to land use, building codes, public health, transport, and education, agriculture, environmental protection, energy, water resources management, poverty reduction, fiscal risk management, and climate change adaptation, among others. This advice, in the context of the World Bank’s policy-based lending, creates both technical capacity and financial incentives that enables formalization of policy changes for improved DRM. The Program Management Unit, located within the World Bank, manages grant resources to carry out GFDRR’s mission. The World Bank, with support from GFDRR, published in 2021 the report “Frontline” on climate and disaster resilience of health systems. In a nutshell, it makes concrete recommendations for how to increase the resilience of health systems to emergencies (like pandemics, disasters). It translates established DRM principles of preparedness, risk reduction, and response into actions for the health sector. It also introduces a resilient infrastructure (Lifelines report) perspective to health: hospitals can’t function without reliable energy/water; patients can’t access healthcare without resilient transport. The team behind the report is working within the GFDRR to support the World Bank’s regional DRM and Health teams, governments and key international and local partners, to integrate principles of disaster resilience into health system planning and investments.

POSITION CONTEXT

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems in many World Bank client countries were struggling to meet routine demand; let alone being able to effectively manage emergencies. But the needs that have emerged during the pandemic are highlighting and intensifying these existing challenges – especially when it comes to capacity, coordination, and effective system planning. GFDRR is now witnessing strongly increased awareness and interest for the issue of healthcare system resilience – both from WB regional task teams and government counterparts. Recent major disasters have further illustrated that the DRM principles of preparedness and emergency response are more relevant than ever in resilient healthcare systems.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, virtually all countries in all regions are confronted with the need to reevaluate and strengthen the preparedness of health systems, so the demand for evidence-based technical advisory services on this issue is strong and continuously growing. This is highlighted by continued strong demand to GFDRR, but also Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HEPR), the IDA Crisis Response Window (CRW), and overall WB COVID-19 response funding. In line with these trends, there is increasing demand to integrate health system preparedness measures into traditional disaster risk management operations, including Cat-DDOs.

Thinking ahead, countries are also increasingly aware that accelerating disasters, climate change, pandemics, urban growth, and demographic changes could significantly increase pressures on already strained health systems. Large shocks – like pandemics or natural disasters – have also shown that simply buying more hospital beds or equipment is not enough to make health systems resilient.

The WB is uniquely positioned to draw on its DRM and Health expertise to offer integrated solutions – integrating health and emergency response agencies, and strengthening the infrastructure on which healthcare systems depend. The GFDRR disaster resilient health system program responds to these demands and needs by providing tailored, evidence-based technical advisory services to WB regional task teams. It offers on-demand analytical toolkits to assess countries’ health system resilience capabilities, and to identify and prioritize policy measures and investment interventions to address shortcomings.

Against this context, the GFDRR disaster resilient health systems program is seeking to hire an Extended Term Consultant (ETC) to support the continued operationalization of the Frontline report principles. Duties and responsibilities are detailed below. Remuneration will follow standard WBG ETC rates. The ETC will report to the GFDRR Practice Manager, and work closely with the task team leaders (TTLs) of the GFDRR Resilient Health Systems thematic area. Any change in the scope of work or timeframe for conducting this assignment will require prior approval from the TTL.

Overall, the work specified under these Terms of References will primarily contribute to the implementation of the GFDRR Climate and Disaster Resilient Health Systems line of work. Some additional time may be dedicated to responding to ad-hoc needs that go beyond the primary focus – e.g. on broader resilient and sustainable development issues. The primary tasks consist of supporting the delivery of the technical advisory program, and entail the following tasks and deliverables:

The ETC will assist the team with implementing the rapid diagnostic scorecard in select client countries, responding to client demand. This involves a desk-based assessment exercise, following an established framework for scoring health system capabilities to respond/cope with disasters. Depending on needs, the ETC may be expected to independently lead this scorecard exercise in some countries, or support other team members through targeted inputs in other countries.

The ETC will support Deep-dive Assessments that complement and expand the rapid scorecard assessment. This involves tailored info gathering, incl. through interviews with clients, task teams, and external experts. It may also involve official travel and site visits.

In addition, the ETC will work closely with TTLs and GFDRR’s Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R) line of work to develop a diagnostic tool to understand a country’s emergency response and preparedness capacity from various aspects (e.g. regulatory framework, policies, institutional mechanism, capacity, budget etc), building on aforementioned scorecard (on Pillar 4) and relevant EP&R’s tools.

The ETC will conduct econometric and statistical analysis related population vulnerabilities, health system capacities and supporting infrastructure. This will include the analysis of household level data on poverty, hazard exposure and vulnerability; analysis of spatial hazard datasets; impact assessments of resilience policy measures; impact assessments of actual disaster events or probabilistic disaster scenarios; the role of infrastructure systems (roads, power, water) in propagating shocks or building community resilience. The ETC will also support the health system modelling team with its work on network and accessibility analytics.

In coordination with the TTLs, the ETC work will support regional task teams as part of the technical advisory service provision by GFDRR programs (incl. the Resilient Health, Resilient Infrastructure, and Disaster Analytics programs). Tasks will include contributing to analytical outputs as part of country ASA programs on disaster and climate resilience (incl. CCDRs), and supporting analytics for the identification and prioritization of investment project components.

Besides above activities, the ETC will work with the team on tasks requested by TTLs, including program management, reporting and communication.

The ETC should satisfy following requirements.

o health system resilience

o disaster risk management

o Broader issues of sustainable resilient development in low/middle income countries, including interaction of climate change and development outcomes

o Advanced skills in econometric and statistical methods

o Experience of handling and analyzing large data sets

o Advanced knowledge of analytical software, including Stata, R, or Python

o Experience working with high-resolution spatial datasets

o Excellent oral and presentation skills

o Excellent writing skills demonstrated through high-quality technical studies and high-profile policy reports; ability to write for different audiences

o Strong diplomatic, organizational, and oral presentation skills

o Ability to work in a multicultural environment with an inter-disciplinary team;