1. Background
The Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (APO) is a collaborative partnership of interested governments, international agencies, foundations, civil society and the research community.
The APO focuses on generating evidence for policy making, acting as a knowledge broker to convey that evidence to policy makers in order to enhance the culture of evidence informed decision making on health issues in Asia Pacific while at the same time increase the capacity to generate and use such evidence.
APO’s new Medium-Term Strategy will focus on 6 broad areas:
- Health System Reviews of countries
- Health System Resilience to external factors such as climate change
- Use of Digital solutions for health system
- Primary Health Care and its components as a means for achieving UHC
- Developing fit for purpose Human Resources for Health
- Challenges of providing an equitable health system, especially financial equity
APO will do this by developing and running policy briefs, comparative country analysis, policy dialogues, webinars and country health system reviews (HiTs).
The Internal Review Panel
Members of The Internal Review Panel (IRP) are responsible for the strategic direction of the APO’s research agenda, the quality of the research and products, and outreach to the research community. The IRP consists of a team of 6 researchers of whom at least 3 must be substantially based in the Asia Pacific region. The IRP plays the dual function of advising on the process of quality control for the research products and providing input into the strategic direction of the research agenda.
2. Description of work
The role of IRP
The IRP’s responsibilities are to:
Review the quality of work produced as part of the implementation of the APO’s work plan and recommend for publication according to international standards;
Provide regular or ad-hoc feed-back to the APO Board and/or the APO Secretariat on the overall quality and policy relevance of the APO’s work, and where appropriate make recommendations on how to improve the quality of APO products; and
Provide advice to the APO Secretariat and the APO Board on the identification of areas for future work, including topics for Policy briefs and Policy dialogue events.
Working condition
Status: Part-time pro bono (voluntary-based)
IRP members will be invited to a face-to-face APO Board meeting at least once a year. There will also be ad hoc virtual meetings to discuss issues as necessary, but this is not expected to be more than a few times per year.
IRP members will be asked to peer review APO publications.
Language: English
3. Opening and selection criteria
Opening for IRP members
The APO plans staggered appointments 2 seats of IRP starting from August 2024 with a further 2 by end of 2024.
Selection criteria
IRP members are desirable to possess:
1) Recognized research experiences in health systems research or in some of the thematic areas mentioned above
2) A strong policy and/or scientific publication records on health policy and systems in Asia-Pacific region
3) Being able to serve as an IRP member for at least one full term of 3 years to avoid any potential conflict of interest, IRP members will:
a) serve in their individual capacity;
b) not be members of the APO Board; and
c) not work for institutions that have current research contract with APO. This does however not preclude IRP members from cooperating with such institutions in general or on non-APO products specifically. Any potential conflict of interest will be acknowledged by the IRP members in a transparent and timely manner and reported to the APO Board. If a conflict of interest arises during their tenure as an IRP member, the member will exclude him, or herself from that particular knowledge generation / brokering activity.
4. Application
Candidates are kindly requested to submit following applications. Applications will be under review by the APO Board and notified in September 2024.
Applications:
- A copy of CV
- Possible timing of the year you could join IRP
- For submissions, please use the email address apobservatory@who.int and title your email "Application IRP Member."