Health Economist

Sight and Life is a charitable foundation established in Switzerland. With 74% of its staff living and working in LMICs across Africa and Asia, it currently has active projects in 13 LMICs with the aim to fill the nutrition gap for vulnerable populations. Sight and Life’s strategy is to translate evidence-backed nutrition innovations into social business models, empowering local communities to provide local solutions for local problems. Successful pilots are taken to scale with the help of partners for better and more lasting impact. More at sightandlife.org

Sight and Life is looking for a health economist for its Phytase project. The broad objective of the project is to evaluate the cost and benefit of phytase addition to food products. Phytase, an enzyme, is an evidence-based solution that, when added to foods, can increase the absorption of calcium, zinc, iron, and other minerals in our body. In animal nutrition, it is also used to increase the absorption of amino acids and energy.

 

The addition of phytase in human foods is a novel intervention requiring its cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness to be established. Sight and Life is developing a cost-benefit model accounting for the cost-effectiveness or social returns of the phytase in human nutrition. The model includes potential health benefits, costs associated with product development, and ongoing marketing and production costs. It enables stakeholders to objectively understand the immediate and long-term impacts of the phytase addition.

 

The health economist will review and refine the first version of the cost-benefit model through literature review and interviewing key stakeholders, estimate the cost-benefit of selected food products across chosen countries, and compare the cost-effectiveness of Phytase Vs. Fortification.

• Review and analyze the first version of the cost-benefit model developed by Sight and Life to identify gap areas in the model.
• Refine the cost-benefit model through a literature review and interviewing key stakeholders. Ensure that the model considers the breadth of the impact (how many people will benefit), depth of the impact (how big is the impact per person) and probability of the innovation’s success (what is the chance of long-term success).
• Use the model to estimate the cost-benefit of selected food products across selected low- and middle-income and high-income countries.
• Compare the cost-effectiveness of phytase addition Vs. fortification in products under public sector fortification programs in selected countries.
• Work closely with the Sight and Life team to build out the insights.
• Submit the final cost-benefit model.
• Contribute to peer-reviewed publications.

• Familiarity with public health space and knowledge of nutrition science, innovations and cost-benefit models is highly valued.
• Ability to see the big picture as well as dive into details.
• Excellent research, analytical, and writing skills; Ability to articulate findings in a lucid format.
• Can draw out meaningful insights from data and communicate them convincingly.

This is a contract from 20 March to 20 April ‘25 and can be remotely located.

 

Please submit your resume to priyanka.kumari@sightandlife.org