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For every child, the right to health

How can you make a difference?

Governments across multiple regions are planning or negotiating significant health sector financing from International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and regional development banks to strengthen primary health care and health system resilience. A growing share of this financing is intended for digital health, yet digital components are often designed late in operation preparation, costed inadequately, and procured before functional, architectural and interoperability requirements are documented. As a result, investments that could strengthen national digital health ecosystems instead risk creating fragmented systems, duplicated data flows, vendor lock-in, and recurring costs that governments are not positioned to scale or sustain. UNICEF is supporting a growing number of countries to develop costed digital health roadmaps and investment cases, creating demand for specialized technical expertise to help governments and partners translate strategic priorities into investment-ready, sustainable, and interoperable digital health programmes.

UNICEF's Health Practice is implementing Digital Health: High-Impact Solutions for Scale, a two-year programme (September 2026 to August 2028) designed to change how digital health investment reaches national scale. Much of the funding that has gone into digital health over the past two decades, UNICEF's included, has paid for pilots that prove a tool in a few districts and then stall, because nothing in their design connects them to the country’s national budgets and large-scale financing on which scale and sustainability depend. This programme is not another pilot, but instead uses a modest, time-bound investment to influence how larger government, IFI and global health partner financing is designed and spent, so that national systems are centered around documented requirements, costed before they are procured and built on shared foundations that later investments can reuse.

The High-Impact Solutions for Scale programme works through two components. In eight countries, country offices are supporting governments to prepare investment-ready digital health blueprints (costed, government-endorsed roadmaps carrying the functional and interoperability requirements that finance ministries and lenders need), timed to the financing windows and preparation cycles of the World Bank, regional development banks and Gavi. In three further countries, the programme funds the operationalization of a health information exchange (HIE), such as registries, terminology services and interoperability components, without which point-of-care applications end up joined through workarounds and duplicated databases at high and recurring cost.

Success is measured by the financing that follows these two components, and the national systems it builds. UNICEF country offices retain government relationships and programme accountability throughout, with technical backstopping from the Health Centre of Excellence and a set of institutional technical partners. Therefore, UNICEF's role shifts from implementing on behalf of governments to accompanying them as a trusted technical adviser through the design, financing and early delivery of systems they steward, whatever the mix of financing behind them. This consultancy strengthens country offices’ ability to position digital health within larger financing operations by providing time-bound analytical, financing, costing and investment planning support.

This consultancy has two purposes. The first, which accounts for most of the assignment, is to provide participating country offices with the analysis, technical input and coordination on digital health financing that most of them do not have in-house, given limited programme staff and digital health expertise. The second is to help UNICEF build credibility and working relationships with IFIs, including regional development banks such as IDB, CAF, ADB and AfDB, by demonstrating a model of technical accompaniment that can extend to other countries with comparable financing opportunities. Currently, UNICEF staff hold these relationships at headquarters, regional offices and country offices, among Health Section colleagues in Panama, Nairobi and Bangkok. The consultant will support UNICEF staff to facilitate and follow through on this ongoing engagement.

The consultant will lead technical support to the digital health financing and investment advisory support across the programme. This includes mapping and tracking the financing windows open to participating countries, preparing analysis and briefs that position digital health within IFI operations and national budget cycles, and contributing investment cases that Ministries of Health, Ministries of Finance and lenders can use. The consultant will work closely with the UNICEF Health Economics and Financing (HEF) team, Health Section colleagues in the COEs, and with IFI teams whose operations cover the participating countries. The assignment requires periodic face-to-face engagement in Panama and working hours that overlap substantially with Latin America and the Caribbean. Fluency in Spanish is required.

If you would like to know more about this consultancy, please review the complete Terms of Reference here: ToRTMC0007656.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have...

Minimum requirements:

Education: Master’ in Health economics, health financing, economics, public policy, public health, international development or a related field. A first-level university degree with two additional years of relevant experience may be accepted in place of an advanced degree.

Work Experience: At least eight years of progressively responsible experience in health financing, health sector investment planning or development finance in low- and middle-income countries, including at least five years working with or within the World Bank or regional development banks on health sector operations (preparation, appraisal or financing instrument design), and a record of producing costed investment cases, financing strategies or national health or digital health roadmaps for governments.

Skills: Knowledge of IFI operation cycles and financing instruments, national budget processes and public financial management.

Knowledge of IFI operation cycles and financing instruments, national budget processes and public financial management.
Working knowledge of how digital health investment is costed and planned, including familiarity with the WHO Digital Implementation Investment Guide, the World Bank Digital Health Blueprint Toolkit and/or comparable approaches.
Ability to translate digital health architecture and system requirements into investment costing and financing language for non-technical audiences.
Ability to write concise analytical products for Ministries of Finance, Ministries of Health and IFI task teams.
Ability to work across several countries and time zones with limited supervision.

Language Requirements: Fluency in English and Spanish is required. Spanish is a screening requirement, and candidates without it are not evaluated further. French is an advantage.

Desirables: Experience in one or more regions of the participating countries.

Experience supporting health sector investment planning or IFI engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Experience with Gavi or other global health financing windows.
Experience designing multi-country or pooled financing arrangements, including for regional public goods.
Experience with UN agencies.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility | UNICEF. Should you be shortlisted, please get in touch with the recruiter directly to share further details, enabling us to make the necessary arrangements in advance.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

Qualified candidates are invited to submit the following documents via the online recruitment portal, TMS (Talent Management System):

An up-to-date TMS profile and curriculum vitae (CV)
Cover letter
A separate financial proposal (only acceptable in the format of the linked template) Financial proposal TMC0007656.docx
Technical Proposal:

CV or P11; a technical note of no more than three pages describing how the candidate would establish the financing window register, and how they would place digital health requirements into an IFI health operation in one participating country of their choice; and one writing sample authored or co-authored by the candidate.

Remarks: If the TOR or financial proposal documents are not downloadable on certain recruitment platforms, please visit our official page Vacancies | UNICEF Careers.

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.

Digital Health Financing and Investment Consultant (Multi-country), Digital Health Transformation, Access and Equity (DHx) Section, Health Practice, Nairobi COE, remote with travel, # 596662