Ariadne Labs is a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Our goal is to drive scalable solutions for better care at critical moments in people’s lives everywhere. Better care means better health outcomes, lower costs, and more actual caring. Critical means solving health systems failures that have major impact, typically touching people by the millions. Ariadne Labs currently has research programs in the areas of childbirth, surgery, palliative care, and primary health care.
BetterBirth Program Overview:
The BetterBirth Program is focused on ensuring better health and wellbeing for women, newborns, and infants by improving quality and standards of care, minimizing complications, and ending preventable deaths. By generating evidence and working with impacted communities to co-design effective and actionable tools, information, and resources, we aim to equip providers with the support they need to provide safe, compassionate care. We do this through the effective implementation of scalable, evidence-based solutions that work in the real world, both at the frontline of care and in communities.
The BetterBirth Program began with the goal of evaluating the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Safe Childbirth Checklist and identifying opportunities and strategies to support its successful implementation. Since that time, our work has grown to address the complexities across the ecosystem of maternal, newborn, and infant health. The portfolio is managed by the BetterBirth Leadership Team (a dyad made up of a science expert and a management expert). This dyad approach is replicated within each project within the portfolio; each project dyad reports into the BetterBirth Leadership Team.
Within the BetterBirth portfolio we have a subset of projects focused on addressing gaps in the maternal newborn and child health (MNCH) ecosystem of care. This subgroup of projects emphasizes the design and implementation of evidence based solutions for the improvement of quality of care around the moment of childbirth. Current projects include an exploration of childbirth induced vulnerability, the patient and caregiver education, assessment of context to improve implementation outcomes and support of global implementation of the WHO Safe Childbirth checklist. As with all of the BetterBirth Program’s research and solutions development work, the MNCH Ecosystem work includes a broad range of stakeholders and experts collaborating with Ariadne Labs to successfully carry out and complete the work.
BetterBirth Research & Project Coordinator Overview:
The BetterBirth Senior Research & Project Coordinator will be a member of the Ariadne Labs’ BetterBirth Program team. The BetterBirth Research & Project Coordinator will be supervised by the Senior Project Manager for the MNH ecosystems of care work and will also work closely with team members across that portfolio to perform and coordinate a range of program support activities and tasks as general support to the project portfolio and team. The MNH sub-team currently includes a Scientific Director, an Associate Director of Program Management & Strategy, a Senior Project Manager, a Scientific Lead, and an intern.
Position Description
Duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:
Project & Research Support:
- Perform administrative duties under minimal supervision at a high proficiency level including communication among and between project team members and external stakeholders (hiring manager may ask for a writing sample and/or administer a skills test during the interview process)
- Implement and organize ongoing knowledge and documentation management of project activities to ensure compliance with grants, including organization of data
- Maintain scheduling of internal project team meetings and health system partner meetings, including documentation and contact information
- Support and collaborate with the Assistant Director and Sr. Project Managers to draft and monitor project work plans, timelines, and reports to funders; track project deliverables and impact metrics, identify roadblocks and escalate issues as they arise
- Manage and oversee compliance with project institutional review boards, including maintaining and updating the protocols and study tools, tracking document changes, and reporting to review boards on modifications and annual reviews.
- Plan, guide and support the team with all logistical, documentation and organization of team, project, external contacts and grant related activities, ensuring compliance with organization and ethical processes and procedures. This will include logistical aspects of project-related meetings, including convenings that will include scheduling, note taking and other documentation management (may include some travel related tasks in the future).
- Create, format, and contribute to slides, reports, documents, tracking systems, and other materials developed by the project team. This likely to include editing and contribution to production of manuscripts
- Assist in quantitative and qualitative data analysis, interpretation and presentation of results
- Conduct targeted literature searches and synthesize findings as needed
- Participate in dissemination work including scientific writing of manuscripts, reports, abstract and development of project-related presentations, including the possibility of co-authorship on scientific papers
- Collects project data, acquiring it through observation, structured interviews, library research, data processing methods, or other research methods
- Schedule, coordinate, and execute internal meetings, webinars, conference calls, virtual meetings, presentations, special events and international travel with project teams managing correspondences, preparing agendas, preparing visual aids or materials, taking minutes and managing all logistical aspects of travel
Program Support:
- Oversee and coordinate team members’ complex schedules and provide general administrative support
- Serve as a main contact for processing and tracking financial tasks including processing expenses and reimbursements, travel booking, and memberships for business-related activities; May have explicit responsibility for certain costs within a budget, including travel.
- Maintain filing systems, including version control and organization of program knowledge management system
- May oversee or coordinate the work/activities of others (interns, part-time students, or temporary employees) who are not direct reports on administrative tasks such as scheduling
- Perform other related duties and responsibilities as required; provide cross coverage as needed
Ariadne Labs:
- Participate in affinity groups across the Lab to foster cross-program/platform sharing and learning
- Participate in organization-wide meetings, such as All Hands and ALM, that promote understanding of Ariadne Labs and provide professional development opportunities
- Maintain effective and collaborative working relationships with internal and external constituents including representing Ariadne Labs professionally with guests, donors, callers, and external visitors; greet guests, candidates, and donors
Basic Qualifications
- 5+ years of relevant experience is required; a combination of education and experience may be considered
PLEASE NOTE: This position has a term appointment of one year from the date of hire with the possibility of an extension. This is a hybrid position and this position will be based in Boston, MA. Additional detail pertaining to this position will be discussed during the interview process. All remote work must be performed in a state in which Harvard is registered to do business (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, California (exempt staff only), Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington).
Additional Qualifications and Skills
The following job-specific skills and competencies are preferred:
- Bachelor’s Degree
- Experience with literature searches and/or scientific writing
- Experience working in Google Suite, including Sheets and Slides
- Experience with other software such as Microsoft office and databases, such as Qualtrics, RedCap, Nvivo or dedoose preferred; Experience with SAS or SPSS is also a plus
- Experience working on applications to and management of ethics committees/institutional review boards (IRBs)
- Familiarity with quantitative and qualitative research methods
- International work experience preferred
- Experience with setting-up video and audio conference calls and virtual meetings (Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams)
- Written and verbal communication skills
- Strong organizational skills
- Positive, proactive, flexible, professional, and a can-do attitude
- Work independently and utilize strong interpersonal skills to problem-solve complex issues
- Develop timelines and meet competing deadlines on time and with high caliber deliverables
- Handle complex and confidential information with discretion
Our core values are:
- Respect for the Ariadne Labs mission, our community, each other, and ourselves;
- Stewardship of our work and resources;
- Pursuit of excellence, with a focus on continual improvement;
- A belief in a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach to our work;
- A commitment to meaningful diversity and inclusion in our work and in the Ariadne Labs community.
Characteristics of people who thrive at Ariadne are:
- humility about the limits of one’s own expertise and experience
- intellectual curiosity
- agility
- self-discipline
- attention to detail
- willingness to roll up sleeves to get the job done
The following cultural competencies are also preferred:
- Awareness of and aptitude to appropriately and effectively understand, respect, and adapt to cultural and identity-based difference within group environments
- Knowledge of and commitment to concepts and issues tied to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Skills related to creating and supporting an environment that allows for inclusion, effective intercultural engagement, and personal humility and authenticity
For more information or to apply, please visit the Harvard Careers Portal and search Requisition #62029BR