Job Description

Duke-NUS Medical School (“Duke-NUS”) is Singapore’s only graduate academic medical school with Signature Research Programmes in Emerging Infectious Disease, Health Services and Systems Research, Cancer and Stem Cell Biology, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases, and Neuroscience and Behavioural Disorders.

The Centre for Outbreak Preparedness (“COP”) was launched in June 2022, with a vision to advance and enhance regional health security across Asia. COP hosts as the secretariat for the Asia Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Asia PGI) which acts as a regional coordination and capacity development platform supporting 14 countries across south and southeast Asia. Asia PGI aims to accelerate the application of pathogen genomic sequencing to enhance outbreak preparedness and response capacity across this region.

Pathogen Genomics Economic Evaluation

COP is recruiting a Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow (RF/SRF) to provide core programmatic support emerging work on economic analyses of pathogen genomics.  The key areas of work include the following:

Investment case development: The Health Systems Enhancement team is currently working with national ministries across 14 countries to supporting planning and budgeting for pathogen genomics. National investment cases include supporting pathogen prioritization, cost-efficient system design, multi-pathogen planning and budgeting. This work includes supporting country implementation of a suite of tools that have been developed by COP in partnership with WHO’s International Pathogen Surveillance Network – including a WHO costing tool for genomics, an associated cost-catalogue of genomics pricing developed with countries, and linkages to global access pricing schemes that have been negotiated by COP and partner bodies in partnership with genomics manufacturers.

Use-case costing: Within COP/Asia PGI’s areas of focus are several use-cases that have been developed based on country identified priorities for pathogen genomics. These include applications for drug-resistant tuberculosis, wastewater surveillance, arboviral disease and others. Economic analyses are critical to generate data on the ‘value’ of genomics relative to other diagnostic standards, and its potential contribution to savings based on its contribution to clinical and public health decision making. Additionally, this work will require generating estimates of demand for genomics across countries, which are critical to supporting national planning and to aggregate demand at a regional level which provides volume estimates to potential manufacturers 

The key responsibilities for the Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow (RF/SRF) will include but not limited to:
•    Work closely with the Health Systems Enhancement team and COP team to support implementation of national investment case for pathogen genomics.
•    Conduct economic evaluation of genomic use-cases, costing demand for genomics across partner countries, document best practices and other related content development.
•    Support capacity-building efforts and stakeholder engagement such as organising and coordinating events, workshops, meetings, webinars, etc.
•    Support the delivery and execution of programme work across multiple projects in COP and Asia PGI, including supporting collaborative efforts with national, regional and global stakeholders and managing timelines for key outputs and deliverables.
•    Contribute to writing research papers, coordinating grant application processes and management of proposals.
•    Perform other related duties incidental to the work described herein, including contributing to occasional administrative and coordination activities.

Qualifications

Applications will be considered from candidates who meet the following qualifications:

• A strong desire to advance global health capacity in Asia.
• A PhD or equivalent in economics, health systems research or a related discipline
• At least 5 years of experience in global health programs or research. Previous experience in low and middle-income contexts in Asia or elsewhere would be an asset.
• A strong background in economic modeling tools and methods is essential.
• Demonstrated ability to contribute to research and related documentation. A track record of contributing to written outputs/reports/peer-reviewed publications is an asset.
• Strong organizational capacity and the ability to work effectively in teams
• The ability to work flexibly and independently.

We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notif.ed