Public Health Advocates (PHAdvocates) brings a public health lens to today’s most pressing problems, helping communities to pass laws, reform systems, and establish norms that foster health, equity, and racial justice. We are a diverse organization of creative, strategic, tenacious people committed to tackling the unjust systems that continue to leave far too many Californians behind. We pride ourselves on being a learning organization that makes time to reflect and refine our individual and collective work to improve outcomes for the communities with whom we partner.
The Research and Learning Manager (Manager) is a unique research position and reports to the Director of Research and Learning. Together they support data-driven systems change, both externally and internally. The Manager ensures staff and partners gather relevant, meaningful, and actionable data to help them advocate for bold equity-focused community-led state and local policy and systems change. The Manager also works closely with the Director to facilitate gathering, interpreting, and acting on information gathered from staff and programs to refine internal policies and processes. Given the added value of external evaluators, whenever possible, PHAdvocates hires external evaluators. The Manager acts as a liaison between program teams and evaluators to help facilitate real-time and meaningful learning from evaluation efforts. To achieve the goals of this small but mighty team, the ideal candidate will have a broad range of research skills and experience, as well as experience with community-engaged policy advocacy.
DESIRED APPROACHES TO WORK
- Moves at the speed of trust
- Balances the use of rigorous research methods with the realities of applied research
- Is driven by curiosity and learning
- Is forward thinking and takes initiative to explore ideas even if they lead to dead ends
- Relishes opportunities for problem solving
- Values iterative processes of learning and refinement
- Is enthusiastic about sharing knowledge and skills with others
RESPONSIBILITIES
Research Methods
- Leads primary and secondary mixed-methods research: develops research tools; collects, analyzes, and interprets data; and summarizes findings for community facing products
- Understands basic statistics, research methods, and sources for publicly available data
- Analyzes and determines the applicability of data to draw conclusions, and has experience writing about data and analyses
- Identifies and tracks promising policies and practices aligned with PHAdvocates goals
- Conducts and synthesizes policy research
- Distills complex data and analyses for multiple audiences (e.g., community members, policy makers, researchers) via top level findings, data visualization, and research briefs
Learning Facilitation
- Liaises with external evaluators and program staff
- Leads staff workshops to facilitate cross-team learning
- Supports teams to refine programming based on evaluation findings and formal reflection sessions
- Facilitates building of research skills among PHAdvocates staff and community partners via one-on-one and group training, technical assistance, and resource development
Project Management
- Manages quantitative, qualitative, and policy research requests from staff and partners
- Juggles multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously
- Acts as a liaison with PHAdvocates staff and external evaluators
- Has strong communication written and verbal skills
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
- Demonstrated commitment to health equity or racial justice
- Advanced degree or 3-5 years of equivalent experience in research and/or evaluation
- Statistical software (e.g., SPSS, R); GIS and data visualization software is a plus
- Project management, including managing the development of research products
- Capacity building for community-based organizations developing, organizing, technical assistance and conducting trainings
- Organizing and/or policy advocacy with historically underinvested in communities
- Bilingual in Spanish is a plus
ABOUT THE POSITION
- This is a full-time exempt position
- California-based remote organization monthly travel required (must reside in California)
- Eligible for full health benefits available to spouses, domestic partners, and dependents
- Salary ranges from $90,000 to $108,000; however, the actual offer takes into account multiple factors including, but not limited to, education, experience, internal equity, and other organizational needs
Submit cover letter, resume, three references, and writing sample electronically to: Sergio Zepeda, Director of Human Resources: SZ@PHAdvocates.org.
Public Health Advocates provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability or genetics.