Manager, New Program Development

About Evidence Action 

Evidence Action is a non-profit dedicated to identifying neglected global health issues and scaling proven solutions - adding years of healthy life for entire generations. Deworm the World, our foundational program, has delivered over 2B deworming treatments, driving dramatic reductions in worm prevalence and generating over $23 billion in lifetime productivity gains. 

Our model operationalizes top academic research (including from Nobel-winning economists) and uses experts across global health, supply chain, and infrastructure to develop and implement health interventions at national scale. Our team of 700+ has reached over 500M people, working hand-in-hand with national governments to scale our approach across nine countries. Measurement and evaluation are embedded in every stage of our work - from idea validation in our Accelerator; to coverage validation upon rollout (quantifying uptake of interventions). 

The Evidence Action Accelerator, founded in 2019, researches and identifies the next unicorns of development - to date we have found five programs with potential to transform the health outcomes of millions, including: 

• Preventing stillbirths and neonatal deaths through testing and treating maternal syphilis - which today causes more deaths than pediatric HIV, and is treatable for just $0.50 a dose
• Reducing under-five child mortality by ~25% through scaling safe water access to hundreds of millions, which can add a year of healthy life for just $40
• Fighting leading causes of childhood disability through delivering iron and folic acid supplements to prevent anemia, applying our innovative school-based delivery model 

With these untapped opportunities now identified, we are at an inflection point in our capacity to create sector-wide impact - and improve health outcomes for hundreds of millions of people globally.

About the Accelerator

Evidence Action’s Accelerator is our engine for growth. The Accelerator is a unique model in global development, designed to select and massively scale only those programs which meet exceptional standards for cost-effectiveness  and scalability. Focusing on health, nutrition, and WASH, we evaluate scores of interventions and employ a venture capital-type ‘funnel’ model to exit those which do not meet our criteria. The result is a select set of programs for which we develop delivery models and scale to deliver outsized value for millions of people across Africa and Asia.

Core to the Accelerator process is our New Program Development (NPD) team. NPD’s primary responsibility is to conduct early-stage research of potential new programs, including literature reviews and cost-effectiveness modeling. NPD’s work adapts as programs progress through the Accelerator pipeline: we shift from evaluating evidence, to designing and piloting new programs, and eventually to launching at-scale. Additionally, NPD serves as a “center of excellence” for the Accelerator, working across teams to facilitate and standardize a rigorous approach to building new programs.

You will thoroughly evaluate the evidence supporting a series of interventions that Evidence Action may launch at scale. You will make evidence-based recommendations for which interventions we should continue developing, and which we should deprioritize according to our criteria. Pending your research and recommendations, you will perform in-country scoping to assess the ‘real world’ feasibility of your intervention, then move to design and implement a pilot before launching at-scale. 

You will report to the Associate Director of New Program Development.

Responsibilities:

1) Desk research to evaluate potential new programs

• Conduct desk-based research to assess the potential of new programs by estimating the total addressable market, cost-effectiveness, evidence-base, strategic fit, and funding opportunities of promising interventions.
• Develop written research deliverables to guide decision-making, which may include evidence reviews, slide decks, data visualizations, or scenario analyses. 
• Work with cost-effectiveness and monitoring staff to design and continuously refine cost-effectiveness models, monitoring frameworks, theories of change, and program evaluations.

2) Evidence-based program scoping and design

• Use bodies of rigorous evidence to design different components of an intervention.
• Design and conduct in-country scoping trips to assess indicators of feasibility such as policy landscape, government support, and last mile delivery.
• Design and manage field activities, including scoping, pilots, and data collection.

3) Manage program piloting, scale-up, and ev