Postgraduate Researcher in Global Health Economics – BEACON-HD

Job description

BEACON-HD is an international, Horizon Europe-funded research project testing two promising strategies — telemedicine with self-monitoring and community-based medication delivery — to strengthen primary health care systems and improve the management of hypertension and type 2 diabetes in rural Rwanda and Uganda. As a postdoctoral researcher, you will play a leading role in the economic and equity analyses within this large-scale field experiment, working closely with an international consortium of health economists, clinicians and implementation scientists. Join us to help generate the evidence needed to make chronic disease care more effective, efficient and fair in low-resource settings.
Job description
Are you interested in leading applied research within a large-scale field experiment aimed at improving the management of chronic disease in low-resource settings? Do you want to help make healthcare delivery more effective, efficient and equitable for people living with hypertension and diabetes in Sub-Saharan Africa?
We offer a post-Doc opportunity for 36 months (90% research, 10% teaching) within BEACON-HD, a large EU Horizon Europe-funded international consortium project.
BEACON-HD is testing two promising implementation strategies, telemedicine with self-monitoring and community-based medication delivery, through a large-scale field experiment in rural Rwanda and Uganda. The project combines this field experiment with qualitative, behavioral and economic research to understand not only whether these strategies work, but how, for whom, and at what cost.
As a postdoctoral researcher, you will take a leading role in the economic and equity work package, working closely with the project's PI and the wider consortium. Your responsibilities will include:

• Contributing to and helping coordinate the BEACON-HD field experiment, from the design of data collection instruments to implementation, analysis and interpretation of results, in close collaboration with consortium partners across Europe, Rwanda and Uganda.
• Leading the collection, quality assurance and analysis of data on costs, resource use and outcomes together with our in-country partners, including field visits to Rwanda and/or Uganda.
• Building and extending a decision-analytic (Markov) model to estimate the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine with self-monitoring and community medication delivery, relative to standard care, from the perspective of the public health systems in both countries.
• Leading a budget-impact analysis assessing the short- and medium-term financial implications of scaling up these strategies.
• Leading an equity-modelling study evaluating how the implementation strategies affect health outcomes across socioeconomic subgroups, and their potential to contribute to universal health coverage.
• Co-authoring peer-reviewed publications and presenting findings at international conferences.
• Contributing to the day-to-day coordination of the work package
  This postdoc position combines field-based data collection and analysis with decision-analytic modelling and applied econometric work. It offers the opportunity to generate new methodological and empirical insights into the evaluation of health-system-strengthening strategies, helping to guide fairer and more efficient healthcare policy in low- and middle-income countries.

Requirements

We are looking for a highly motivated and talented candidate with the following qualifications:
Must-haves:

• A completed PhD (or a PhD close to completion) in health economics, development economics, economics, econometrics, or a closely related discipline.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills, with knowledge of economic evaluation methods such as decision-analytic or cost-effectiveness modelling.
• Proficiency in statistical programming (e.g., Stata, R).
• Excellent written and spoken English, with the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly.
• Ability to work independently on a research agenda while collaborating within a large, multidisciplinary, international consortium.
• Willingness to travel to Rwanda and Uganda for fieldwork and consortium meetings.

Nice-to-haves:

• Demonstrated experience conducting research in development economics or health economics.
• Hands-on experience designing and/or implementing fieldwork or field experiments, ideally in low- and middle-income country settings.
• Familiarity with Markov modelling, budget-impact analysis, or equity-weighted economic evaluation.
• Prior research experience in Sub-Saharan Africa or other global health / global development contexts.
• Experience working with trial or field-experiment data.
• Interest in contributing to broader project tasks beyond one's own work package, within a large international consortium.
• A track record of, or clear potential for, publishing in high-impact peer-reviewed journals.

Employer

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is an internationally oriented university with a strong social orientation in its education and research, as expressed in our mission ‘Creating positive societal impact’. EUR is home to 4.100 academics and professionals and almost 33.000 students from more than 140 countries. Everything we do, we do under the credo The Erasmian Way – Making Minds Matter. We’re global citizens, connecting, entrepreneurial, open-minded, and socially involved. These Erasmian Values function as our internal compass and create EUR’s distinctive and recognizable profile. From these values, with a broad perspective and with an eye for diversity, different backgrounds and opinions, our employees work closely together to solve societal challenges from the dynamic and cosmopolitan city of Rotterdam. Thanks to the high quality and positive societal impact of our research and education, EUR can compete with the top European universities. www.eur.nl.
Faculty / Institute / Central service
Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) is a leading school in economics in the Netherlands. It has a strong international reputation and aims to do outstanding research. Moreover, it provides excellent education at the BA., MA. and Ph.D. levels. Much research at Erasmus School of Economics is policy relevant, has social impact, and offers a strong research culture, ample research resources, and comparatively low teaching loads.
www.eur.nl/en/ese

Additional information

More information
For questions regarding the research project please contact the project supervisor: dr. Carlos Riumalló-Herl riumalloherl@ese.eur.nl.
For questions regarding the application procedure please contact Linda Klaver (Operations Manager) at om.ae@ese.eur.nl