Health Economist – Ethiopia
Locations: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Deadline: 26 November 2026 (Early Application are encouraged as the position may close once a suitable candidate is found).
Job Description
About Palladium
Operating in over 50 countries, Palladium is a global consulting and implementation company working in partnership with governments, businesses, investors, and communities to design and deliver solutions that create lasting positive impact. We address some of the world’s most complex challenges across infrastructure, economic growth and natural capital, health, energy, climate and environment, and digital transformation—strengthening systems, institutions, and markets to support inclusive and sustainable development. Our more than 2,100 staff worldwide work as trusted advisors across diverse contexts, combining deep technical expertise, implementation techniques, and innovative technology to deliver locally informed, client-focused solutions that help organizations achieve measurable, sustainable impact.
Palladium is part of GISI’s global family of companies, which aims to create solutions for the world’s most complex challenges. With annual revenues of $14 billion, GISI’s approximately 15,000 employees are engaged in projects across 100 countries worldwide providing construction, program/project management, and engineering consulting services.
Project Overview
The GHSD America First Palladium Sole Source Award supports country-led efforts to strengthen health systems, advance global health security, and sustain essential health services in alignment with the America First Global Health Strategy. Leveraging Palladium’s expertise in health systems strengthening, digital transformation, and data use, the project will strengthen governance, service delivery, and decision-making through integrated and interoperable systems across priority health programs. The award also supports stronger health financing, public financial management, and accountability mechanisms to promote resilient, efficient, and country-owned health systems.
Position Summary
The Health Economist provides economic and analytical support to strengthen health financing systems, inform policy and investment decisions, and support sustainable health sector financing. Reporting to the Health Care Financing Lead, the Health Economist will apply health economics theory and methods, including economic evaluation, costing, actuarial and financial modeling, efficiency and equity analysis, and fiscal space analysis, to generate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence for the Ministry of Health (MoH), the Ethiopian Health Insurance Service (EHIS), and other government counterparts.
The Health Economist will be part of the health financing reforms, improve resource allocation and value for money, strengthen public financial management, and support government efforts to expand equitable and sustainable access to essential health services. The position serves as the project’s senior source of health economics expertise: setting the methodological standards for economic and financial analyses, quality-assuring the analytical work of the Health Care Financing (HCF) team and translating complex evidence into practical policy and program recommendations
Primary Responsibilities
Economic Evaluation and Evidence Generation
- Design, coordinate, and quality-assure health economic analyses, including cost-effectiveness, cost-utility, cost-benefit, and budget impact analyses, return-on-investment studies, and distributional and equity analyses, to inform priority setting, resource allocation, and policy choices.
- Conduct health financing situation analyses, health expenditure analyses, public expenditure reviews, efficiency analyses, and financial sustainability assessments, using national health accounts and other expenditure data sources.
- Develop, document, and maintain economic, financial, and actuarial models (costing, revenue projection, expenditure forecasting, scenario and sensitivity analysis), ensuring that assumptions, data sources, and methods are transparent and reproducible.
- Design and oversee household, facility, and provider surveys and other assessments (for example, ability-to-pay, out-of-pocket and catastrophic expenditure, utilization, and costing surveys), including sampling, tool development, analysis, and interpretation of findings.
Health Insurance, Benefit Package, and Strategic Purchasing Reform Design Support
- Conduct economic and actuarial analyses to inform the design and financial sustainability of the community-based health insurance schemes, including assessing contribution and premium levels, risk pooling arrangements, subsidies, and indigent financing mechanisms.
- Lead affordability and ability-to-pay analyses to support the review of CBHI contribution levels, using household, health service utilization, contribution, and subsidy data across urban, rural, and pastoral populations.
- Coordinate the economic and costing analysis for benefit package design and redesign, using cost-effectiveness, budget impact, equity, and financial protection criteria to inform prioritization.
- Support strategic purchasing and the design, costing, piloting, and evaluation of alternative performance based provider payment mechanisms (PPM), and assess their effects on efficiency, quality, equity, and financial sustainability.
- Support EHIS work to define and operationalize household and community income-classification criteria and tools, and strengthen indigent identification, verification, enrollment, financing, monitoring, and periodic reassessment.
Resource Tracking, Domestic Resource Mobilization, and Public Financial Management
- Strengthen health resource tracking and expenditure analysis, including the analytical foundations for health financing dashboards and co-financing and co-investment commitments.
- Analyze fiscal space and design innovative domestic resource mobilization options and sustainability and transition plans, working with government and development partners.
- Support program-based budgeting, budget execution, and expenditure efficiency analysis in collaboration with MoH, finance institutions, and regional counterparts.
Data Analytics, Monitoring and Evaluation and Evidence Generation
- Support the use of data, analytics, and digital solutions for health financing planning, monitoring, and performance management.
- Contribute to the design of health financing indicators, targets, and measurement approaches, and support the project MEL team in tracking HCF milestones, evaluating the effects of financing reforms, and documenting learning and adaptation.
- Generate policy recommendations and prepare technical briefs, reports, presentations, and knowledge products, including manuscripts for peer-reviewed or other dissemination where appropriate.
Required Qualifications
Education
- Master’s degree in Health Economics, Economics, Health Financing, Public Health, Development Economics, Public Policy, Statistics, or a related field.
Experience
- Minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible experience in health economics, health financing, public financial management, health systems strengthening, or related fields.
- Demonstrated experience conducting economic evaluations, costing studies, health expenditure analyses, actuarial or financial modeling, and financing assessments.
- Experience designing and analyzing surveys or other primary data collection to inform health financing or health insurance policy.
- Experience supporting health financing reforms, health insurance initiatives, benefit package design and costing, strategic purchasing, provider payment reforms, or domestic resource mobilization efforts.
- Experience working with government institutions, donor-funded projects, development partners, or international organizations.
- Experience applying advanced analytics, visualization tools, AI-enabled analytics, or digital decision-support systems in health financing.
- Experience with U.S. Government-funded programs, including DOS, CDC, or other federal agencies, is highly desirable.
- Experience working with multilateral organizations, including the World Bank, Global Fund, United Nations agencies, and other development partners, is an advantage.
- Experience supporting health financing or health systems strengthening programs in Ethiopia is preferred.
Technical Competencies and Skills
- Strong knowledge of health economics, health financing, public financial management, and health systems strengthening.
- Advanced skills in economic evaluation and modeling methods (cost-effectiveness, budget impact, costing, actuarial and fiscal projection), and in applied econometrics and quantitative analysis.
- Proficiency in Stata, R, or Python and advanced Microsoft Excel for modeling; experience with costing and modeling tools and with a data visualization platform such as Power BI or Tableau is an advantage.
- Familiarity with national health accounts methods, health financing reforms, health insurance systems, strategic purchasing, and provider payment mechanisms.
- Understanding of monitoring and evaluation concepts, indicator development, and impact or reform evaluation methods; ability to work with digital and IT teams to embed analytical logic in dashboards and information systems.
- Understanding of donor-funded programs and financing requirements, including U.S. Government and multilateral development partners.
- Strong analytical, communication, stakeholder engagement, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to translate complex evidence into practical policy and program recommendations.
- Strong organizational, project management, mentoring, and technical writing skills.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early as the position may close once a suitable candidate is found. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or status as a protected veteran.
Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual, or for any other circumstance, please email our team at: accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.
Safeguarding – We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.
