Senior Health Specialist/Senior Economist - Health Value Chains

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.

Context and Organizational Unit

The World Bank Group (WBG) is a unique global partnership of five institutions driven by a bold vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet. As one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, the WBG helps solve the world's greatest development challenges. The WBG is a dynamic, diverse organization with 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide. It works with public and private sector partners, invests in groundbreaking projects, and uses data, research, and technology to bring tangible and transformative change around the globe. For more information, visit www.worldbankgroup.org

The WBG Knowledge Bank

In 2026, the WBG launched the Knowledge Bank - a WBG-wide institutional transformation that fundamentally reshapes how the institution generates, shares, and applies knowledge across its public and private sector work. The Knowledge Bank is organized around five cross-institutional Verticals - People, Planet, Prosperity, Infrastructure, and Digital and AI - each bringing together IBRD/IDA and IFC teams under a unified structure to develop enabling policies and scale proven solutions. It is overseen by a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at Managing Director level. The Knowledge Bank represents a decisive shift away from siloed, institution-specific knowledge production toward an integrated "One WBG" approach in which global expertise is consistently applied to country-level challenges and private sector opportunities, supported by AI-enabled platforms including Knowledge 360 and Data 360, and by the WBG Academy, which builds capacity among policymakers and practitioners to apply WBG knowledge in their country contexts.

People Vice Presidency (People Vertical)

The People Vice Presidency promotes investment in our most precious resource - people. It delivers knowledge for impact and provides public and private solutions to operational teams and clients across the WBG to produce scalable impact in support of the WBG's mission. Better lives and better futures are only possible when all people have equal access to quality health care, education, and social protection, and when all people have the opportunity to build and draw on their human capital throughout life to learn, work, create businesses, and have dignity.

The People Vice Presidency works with countries and global partners to:

• provide quality, affordable health services to 1.5 billion people by 2030 through a combination of financing, knowledge and partnerships.
• cut learning poverty in half by 2030 and empower futures through education and job-relevant skills.
• close gender gaps, end gender-based violence, and support women's health and economic inclusion and empowerment.
• connect policymakers, facilitate cross-learning, and foster investments and policy action on human capital through the Human Capital Project-our global network of nearly 100 countries.
• reach half a billion people with social assistance programs by 2030.

The People Vertical's objectives in driving outcomes include replicating and scaling effective solutions, enhancing thought leadership and innovation, and delivering timely knowledge to client teams. It draws on the immense knowledge base of staff, clients, development partners, and civil society to tailor development solutions that meet the unique circumstances and goals of a country. For more information: https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/unit/human-development

Global Health Directorate

The Global Health Directorate leads the WBG''s health agenda, partnering with governments and the private sector to strengthen health systems, improve health outcomes, and accelerate progress to expand access to quality, affordable health care. The Directorate provides intellectual leadership, technical expertise, and operational support to country teams working across the full spectrum of health systems challenges - from primary care delivery and health financing to health emergency preparedness and response and healthy longevity. Collaborating across technical, geographic and institutional boundaries, the Global Health Directorate supports regional teams to deliver on the Bank''s corporate health commitments - reaching 1.5 billion people with quality, affordable health services and building resilience in 66 countries - while supporting the creation of more and better jobs.

The Global Health Directorate is led by a Global Director supported by two Practice Managers that oversee the Directorate's two units - Policy & Regulations (P&R) and Solutions and Impact (S&I) - and a Front Office responsible for strategy, partnerships, risk management, external and internal engagement, and talent and budget management. A Program Coordination Unit reports jointly to both Managers and serves as the operational bridge between the two units, managing portfolio and pipeline, Health Compacts, Country Partnership Framework (CPF) upstream engagement, and regional outreach. Two cross-cutting layers - Methods, Impact Measurement and Innovation and Digital and AI - provide foundational technical support to all programs within the Directorate.

Health Policy and Regulation Team

The Health Policy and Regulation team within the Global Health Directorate is responsible for the normative, policy, and regulatory frameworks that underpin the WBG''s global health agenda. It houses four dedicated programs: Mission 1.5 Billion Health Beneficiaries (health service delivery, health financing, and healthy longevity); P&R of Mixed Health Systems (Mixed Health System, Contracting/PPPs, health sector value chains, and the Health for Jobs agenda); Resilient Health Systems (health emergency preparedness, response and resilience, climate change, and public health and disease prevention); and Nutrition. Together, these programs generate the evidence, norms, and policy tools that guide both WBG country operations and broader global health policy dialogue.

Opportunity

The P&R of Mixed Health Systems program, within the Health P&R team, is seeking to hire a Senior Economist / Senior Health Specialist, based in Washington, D.C., to serve as a technical specialist on health value chains and to coordinate delivery and assure quality of the program''s Health Value Chains work area.

The team brings together specialists across pharmaceutical regulatory policy, market shaping and procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, industrial development, trade facilitation, and skills. The postholder is accountable for converting their combined expertise into a coherent, sequenced offer that regional teams use - the diagnostics, tools, evidence base, and hands-on support through which the WBG delivers on securing access to health commodities through stronger supply chains and regional manufacturing.

Health value chains - the systems through which medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, medical devices, and related health products and services are developed, financed, manufactured, regulated, procured, and delivered - are central to the availability, affordability, quality, and resilience of healthcare in developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of globally concentrated supply chains and the risks that heavy import dependence poses to health security. This created renewed momentum behind local and regional manufacturing, regulatory strengthening, and supply chain resilience at the center of the global health and industrial policy agenda.

The World Bank Group is uniquely positioned to help client countries strengthen health value chains - combining IBRD/IDA policy, regulatory and financing instruments with IFC investment and advisory services and MIGA guarantees to shape markets, de-risk private investment, strengthen regulatory systems, and expand sustainable access to quality-assured health products. This agenda contributes directly to the WBG''s goal of reaching 1.5 billion people with quality, affordable health services, and supplies the health sector evidence base for the More and Better Jobs (MBJ) agenda through the employment and industrial-development potential of health-sector value chains.

The Senior Economist / Senior Health Specialist will provide the deep technical and analytical leadership that underpins this work area: coordinating the development of the diagnostics, tools, and evidence base that serve regional health teams; coordinating the technical content of its operational products; and providing hands-on support to regional teams and clients designing and implementing value-chain engagements across the public and private sectors. The role sits within the P&R of Mixed Health Systems program and works across IBRD/IDA and IFC, in close collaboration with regional operations teams, the S&I IFC Private Sector Investments Center of Excellence, and external partners including the global health and development finance institutions, foundations, regional organizations active in this area and the private sector.

The successful candidate will be a self-starter with strong analytical, operational, and communication skills, deep knowledge of pharmaceutical and health-product markets and supply chains, and the ability to translate complex market, regulatory, and financing issues into clear guidance for governments, private investors, and senior management. Travel to client countries and representing the World Bank Group at technical events will be required.

The role is a service function. This work area succeeds when regional teams choose to draw on it. Generating demand through demonstrated usefulness is therefore central to the role.

Reporting and Accountability

The position reports to the Practice Manager for P&R within the Global Health Directorate. Day-to-day direction, work program, and deliverables are agreed with the Program Manager, P&R of Mixed Health Systems, who holds strategic and resource accountability for the program and its four work areas and serves as a co-supervisor.

DUTIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

Technical Leadership of the Health Value Chains Work Area

• Serve as the Directorate''s principal technical reference and coordinator on health value chains - pharmaceuticals, vaccines, diagnostics, and medical products - for internal teams, regional operations, clients, and external partners.
• Develop and propose the technical strategy, operational priorities, and annual delivery plan for the health value chains work area for the Program Manager''s decision, grounding proposals in market evidence, regional demand, and assessed country readiness.
• Integrate specialist inputs into coherent, clearance-ready products, ensuring outputs authored by different specialists share a common analytical frame, use consistent terminology, and do not duplicate one another. Taking key deliverables to clearance-ready quality.
• Provide technical quality assurance on value-chain content produced elsewhere in the Directorate and in regional operations. Coordinate the day-to-day work of a multidisciplinary task team of staff and consultants on value-chain deliverables, including recruitment input, task assignment, and technical quality assurance, delivering against the resource envelope.

Delivery of the operational toolkit and knowledge offer

• Coordinate the delivery of the work area''s operational toolkit, each product developed with the relevant specialist and partners: the Binding Constraints Diagnostic Framework; the Market and Product Selection Framework; the Procurement and Supply Chain Diagnostics and Reform Tool; the Investment Incentives and Fiscal Policy Toolkit; the Governance Guidance; and the Skills Assessment.
• Ensure each tool is piloted with country teams and revised on the basis of use; own the feedback loop between pilot experience and tool design.
• Establish and maintain the Repository of Knowledge as a live, navigable resource that consolidates evidence, diagnostics, case studies, and templates currently dispersed across teams and regions, curated on K360.
• Lead the technical content of the TTL Refresher Module on Health Value Chains, the World Bank's Health System Flagship program and the Managing Markets for Health Bootcamp.
• Anchor the technical content of the internal community of practice on health value chains.

Country and Regional Operational Support

• Provide upstream, hands-on support to regional operations teams to embed health value-chain objectives in country programs, health projects, Health Compacts, and private sector engagements, tailoring approaches to country context and client demand.
• Respond to regional demand for technical assistance in collaboration with other experts on the team in areas such as procurement, manufacturing, regulation, and access to medicines, and build a cross-regional pipeline of value-chain operations, working through the PIU on portfolio and pipeline processes.
• Lead technical policy dialogue with government counterparts on value-chain reform, escalating to the Program Manager where dialogue engages broader program positioning or institutional commitments.
• Build value-chain capability across regional health teams so that routine engagements can proceed without central technical support.
• Supply the Program Manager and the Methods, Impact Measurement and Innovation team with data on toolkit uptake, reuse, and usefulness ratings from country teams.

One WBG and cross-practice coordination

• Contribute to broker and sustain the working-level joint arrangements on which the work area depends, including with IFC''s Country Advisory and Economics teams, the WB Procurement Practice, the Global Financing Facility, Prosperity, and the Education Practice.
• Work with the S&I IFC Private Sector Investments Center of Excellence on private capital mobilization for health value chains, including blended finance structures, guarantees, and demand-side instruments such as volume guarantees and advance purchase commitments.
• Convene joint IBRD/IDA, IFC, and MIGA technical teams around specific country and regional opportunities, so that policy reform, demand creation, financing, and risk mitigation are designed as a single sequenced offer rather than in parallel.

Knowledge, Technical Partnerships, and Capacity Building

• Produce and curate operational toolkits, primers, case studies, and guidance on health value chains, access to medicines, and local production; lead learning events and anchor the technical content of the associated community of practice.
• Maintain working-level technical relationships with external and internal partners and represent the WBG in technical fora on health value chains and local manufacturing, and access to medicines. This also includes technical input in partnerships.
• Build value-chain capability across regional health teams so that routine engagements can proceed without central technical support.

Contribution to the Program

• Supply the Program Manager with technical evidence, briefing material, and options analysis required for senior management advice, corporate reporting, Board and donor material, and external positioning on health value chains.
• Contribute value-chain evidence into the program''s other work areas. Framing and ownership of those work areas rests with their respective leads.
• Deputize for the Program Manager in technical fora on value chain matters when requested.
• Mentor junior staff and consultants in the team, and contribute to a collaborative, inclusive team environment.
• Flag emerging market, regulatory, and geopolitical developments in health value chains that carry strategic or reputational implications for the program.