MERL Specialist, AFF

This role was posted on October 20, 2025. Please note that we will review applications on a rolling basis.

The Role

At Last Mile Health, we dig work. Do you have experience leading innovative monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) initiatives to strengthen health systems? If so  you could be the right fit for our MERL Specialist role with the Africa Frontline First (AFF) Initiative.

The MERL Specialist will coordinate and strengthen AFF’s MERL function, leading the implementation of its MERL framework, ensuring systems are in place to track progress against strategic objectives, and coordinating activities across teams and partners. The role will work closely with program leads and technical teams to ensure data collection, analysis, and reporting are accurate, consistent, and aligned with AFF’s vision and priorities.

This role is central to demonstrating and amplifying AFF’s impact. The MERL Specialist will capture programmatic learning, translate it into actionable insights, and help inform decisions across government and institutional stakeholders. This position will support pro-Community Health Worker policies, strengthen advocacy and resource mobilization, and ensure evidence generated by AFF drives meaningful change in community health programs.

About Africa Frontline First 

Africa Frontline First Initiative aims to support ten countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to build high-functioning, resilient, country-led community health service delivery with an expanded and institutionalized health workforce of 200,000 CHWs by 2030. Anchored within the local context and health reform journey of each country, these shifts in community health service delivery will contribute to reducing excess morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, Malaria, TB, and HIV, prevent maternal and child mortality, advance health security, and accelerate economic recovery at the community level following the pandemic. In turn, these investments in community health are critical to progress on the health SDGs, including ending AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, expanding universal health coverage (UHC), and as well as ensuring effective pandemic preparedness and response to COVID-19 and future pandemics.

The AFF initiative is led as a collaborative effort by the Financing Alliance for Health, Last Mile Health, and Community Health Impact Coalition under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. 

This hybrid role is based in Accra, Ghana, and open only to candidates authorized to work in Ghana. It’s a 12-month fixed-term contract with potential for renewal.

What You'll Do:

Monitoring and Evaluation, and Learning

• Responsible for ensuring timely collection, review, analysis, and validation of quarterly impact data updates for AFF’s Impact Dashboard and Key Performance Indicator reporting.
• Develop and regularly refine MERL tools and guidance and facilitate strong reporting systems aligned with organizational strategy and stakeholder requirements.
• Facilitate collaboration with AFF’s partner organizations’ MERL teams, from Last Mile Health and Financing Alliance for Health.
• Manage and provide technical leadership, support, and coordination to AFF’s data visualization project, the CHW Intelligence Hub. 
• Facilitate strong knowledge management practices. 

Cross-Organization Coordination

• Coordinate and proactively engage the MERL Working Group through weekly meetings and ongoing collaboration on all MERL activities and deliverables.
• Serve as a cross-organizational leader in promoting coherence, consistency, and quality in data collection and MERL practices across the organization.
• Assess MERL capacity gaps and develop capacity-building plans and initiatives for staff, including tailored training, coaching, mentoring, and technical support as needed.

MERL Team Support

• Deliver timely, accurate, compelling, and high-quality MERL reports to inform donor, partner, and stakeholder reporting.
• Engage directly with internal and external stakeholders to coordinate collection and synthesis of information.
• Develop impact storytelling approaches, including case studies, briefs, and impact stories, that clearly articulate the organization’s contributions and successes.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree required, Master's degree in public health, monitoring and evaluation, epidemiology, health policy, or other related field preferred.
• Professional experience in public health and/or international development, especially managing  MERL activities in community health programs.
• Experience with designing and implementing MEL systems for data collection and results measurement.
• Relevant years of experience in quantitative and qualitative MERL methods.
• Demonstrated years of experience managing research studies and/or program evaluations and applying equity principles to MERL activities.
• Experience in strengthening capacity for MERL activities within global organizations.
• Demonstrated experience with stakeholder engagement and ability to collaborate with and provide technical support to internal teams and external partners, government counterparts.
• Demonstrated experience working to promote a learning/data use culture at previous places of work.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating data collection and project management across complex or matrixed and multi-country programs.
• Demonstrated experience developing MERL reports, dashboards, publications, whitepapers, toolkits, and factsheets.
• Relevant experience in the use of software for qualitative and quantitative data analysis (Excel, SPSS, Stata, Dedoose, etc.); mobile data collection tools (ODK, Kobo, etc.), data management (databases, SQL, etc.), and DHIS2; and data visualization tools (e.g., PowerBI, Canva).

You'll Impress Us If

• You have strong interpersonal and advocacy skills, fostering collaboration across diverse teams and effectively communicating the strategic importance of MERL to leadership, staff, and partners.
• You are proactive, solutions-oriented, and approach with a commitment to continuous learning, innovation, and adaptability amid evolving priorities and resource constraints.
• You apply analytical rigor and critical thinking to synthesize complex data, generate high-quality evidence products, and leverage relevant tools for data analysis, visualization, and dissemination.
• You excel at translating complex MERL findings into clear, compelling narratives and engaging diverse stakeholders such as donors, governments, and partners, through evidence-informed communication and advocacy.

Compensation Information:

At Last Mile Health, we strive to reward our employees equitably and transparently. This means that we pay our employees based on a clear and consistent methodology and without regard to their identity or personal relationships. We have made this model fully transparent so that everyone has access to all information related to compensation. We hope this helps you better understand Last Mile Health’s values and commitments to our employees. We look forward to answering any questions you may have during the hiring process.

Before applying to this role, please take a moment to learn more about our approach to compensation and how compensation works in each of the countries where we operate. Please find the link to our compensation model and benefits overview below:

OVERVIEW OF LAST MILE HEALTH’S COMPENSATION MODEL

Compensation for this position:

The Band for this position: GHA-3

For Ghana, the range is $27,206 to  $42,046 USD per annum, depending upon experience doing an equivalent role. Please note that this compensation is subject to statutory taxes.

About Last Mile Health

Last Mile Health partners with governments to design, scale, strengthen, and sustain high-quality community health systems, which empower teams of community and frontline health workers to bring life-saving primary healthcare to the world’s most remote communities. LMH is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.lastmilehealth.org.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at LMH. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.