E4H FED-TA (AMR): STRATEGIC LEAD / POLITICAL ECONOMY EXPERT

This role offers senior leadership for a critical antimicrobial resistance (AMR) workstream within Pakistan’s National Institute of Health (NIH), focusing on strengthening governance, surveillance, laboratory quality, and evidence-to-action functions. The position is embedded in the Evidence for Health (E4H) programme, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), which supports health system resilience and emergency preparedness across Pakistan. The Senior National STTA – AMR Strategic Lead / Political Economy Expert will lead a specialized four-person federal AMR team, ensuring alignment with national strategies such as NAP-AMR 2.0 and integration with broader health security frameworks. This role requires strategic oversight, political economy analysis, and senior-level engagement to institutionalize priority AMR functions, improve data quality and use, and facilitate sustainable government ownership and transition of donor-supported activities.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead and coordinate the AMR Workstream 2 team, integrating governance, surveillance, laboratory quality, and evidence-use activities into a unified workplan.
- Conduct inception activities with NIH AMR and IHR Secretariats to confirm priority functions, institutional ownership, sequencing, and partner roles, including review of Fleming Fund legacy support.
- Provide strategic political economy analysis to identify institutional incentives, bottlenecks, and opportunities for advancing AMR priorities.
- Engage and advocate with senior officials across NIH, Ministry of NHSR&C, One Health institutions, and development partners to secure decisions, approvals, and maintain momentum.
- Strengthen AMR governance through the AMR Secretariat and National AMR Steering Committee, clarifying roles, responsibilities, and transition arrangements for priority functions.
- Document recurrent resource and financing pathways to ensure sustainability, including PC-1/PC-4 processes and partner coordination.
- Oversee the development and delivery of key outputs such as the AMR workplan, governance and transition packages, surveillance and antibiogram reports, and institutionalization handover documentation.
- Facilitate capacity building by co-developing tools and workflows with NIH counterparts and progressively transferring functions to government staff.
- Ensure structured coordination with the IHR Secretariat to align AMR priorities within the broader health security architecture.
- Provide inputs for consolidated FCDO reporting and maintain a partner division-of-labor matrix to avoid duplication.

Required Qualifications

- Master’s degree or higher in public health, health policy/management, epidemiology, infectious diseases, microbiology, pharmacy, health systems, or a related discipline.
- At least 10 years of progressively responsible experience in public health, health systems, or health security, with substantial senior-level experience in AMR or related communicable disease programs.
- Proven expertise in political economy analysis, institutional strengthening, and senior-level advocacy within the federal government, regulatory bodies, and development partners in Pakistan.
- Strong knowledge of NAP-AMR 2.0, IHR/JEE/NAPHS frameworks, and One Health governance.
- Familiarity with NIH AMR Secretariat arrangements and Fleming Fund-supported functions is highly desirable.
- Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary technical teams and manage transition and sustainability of donor-supported government functions.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits

- Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
- The position is based in Islamabad with an anticipated level of effort of 60 days between October 2026 and March 2027.
- Opportunity to contribute to a high-impact health security initiative within a key national institution, working alongside experienced technical and policy experts.
- Engagement in a programme that supports sustainable institutional capacity building and government ownership of critical AMR functions.

This role demands strategic thinking, excellent negotiation and stakeholder management skills, and the ability to produce clear, actionable policy documents while working effectively within existing government structures.