Post Doctoral Fellow in Health

Fellowship Title: Post Doctoral Fellow in Health

Deadline: 1^st Jan. 2019

About Organisation:

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a network of affiliated professors around the world who are united by their use of randomized evaluations to answer questions critical to poverty alleviation.  J-PAL’s headquarters is a center within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with regional offices around the world hosted by local universities.  J-PAL South Asia was established in August 2007 at the Institute of Financial Management Research (IFMR), in order to expand J-PAL’s research and policy outreach in South Asia.

About Fellowship:

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South Asia is pleased to announce a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship supporting the Cash Transfers for Child Health (CaTCH) research initiative. The successful candidate will be based in India and work with the initiative’s co-chairs Pascaline Dupas and Seema Jayachandran, other J-PAL affiliated researchers, and the J-PAL South Asia Policy team to help synthesize and disseminate evidence on the role of cash transfer and pay-for-peformance programmes for improving child health outcomes in India.

The fellowship can lead to the writing of co-authored meta-analysis and review papers on cash transfer evidence. This fellowship is designed to help the selected candidate launch a successful academic or non-academic research career by allowing him or her to gain experience working with government stakeholders and donors. The fellow will also have opportunities to participate in J-PAL policy dissemination, capacity-building, and mentoring activities.

Roles & Responsibilities:

The primary responsibility of the postdoctoral fellow will be to help synthetize and disseminate the results and policy lessons from CaTCH funded studies to the research community, policymakers, funding organisations, and practitioners. The Post Doc will also be expected to participate in dissemination workshops, and help organize a research conference. The role also allows time and provides funding opportunities for the Post Doc to pursue his or her own research projects related to maternal and child health in India. The selected candidate will dual-report directly to the initiative co-chairs and J-PAL South Asia senior management.

Fellowship responsibilities include:

• Work with CaTCH funded full evaluations to see that certain common indicators across studies are being measured in a standard format
• Co-author an article that synthesizes the evidence generated by the various CaTCH projects, including meta-analysis and comparative cost-effectiveness analyses
• Organize a regional workshop that brings together CaTCH researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders to discuss the findings from the evaluations
• Oversee the writing of policy briefs on CaTCH funded research projects
• Oversee the archiving of all CaTCH related data (survey and administrative data) in the public domain

Qualifications:

The fellowship is open to a candidate who has earned either a PhD in Economics or Public Policy with a significant focus on health OR a PhD in public health with a focus on quantitative research methods. The candidate should have demonstrated strong research interests and experience in health (or human development broadly defined) in developing countries and impact evaluation (demonstrated by coursework and/or collaborative research activities). Significant applied econometrics skills are expected.

Additional factors that will favorably influence selection include:

• experience in evidence synthesis and reviews of randomized evaluations
• evidence of independently managing complex projects with multiple stake holders
• previous experience working in South Asia, especially with government partners
• knowledge of Hindi and/or other Indian languages

For more information please check the Link