Unit Description:
The McMaster Health Forum’s goal is to generate action on the pressing health and social issues of our time. We do this based on the best-available research evidence, as well as experiences and insights from citizens, professionals, organizational leaders, and government policymakers. www.mcmasterforum.org
We are looking for an individual who can bring the experience, skills and drive required in our high-demand, fast paced environment – where multiple simultaneous (and often interdependent) projects and initiatives, interactions with numerous high profile health- and social-system stakeholders, and prompt responses to identified opportunities and to stakeholder needs are the norm. Working at the Forum has elements of what it’s like to work in the highly visible office of a health minister, from the client-centred perspective of a consulting firm, and with the potential for innovation of a research institute. Candidates must demonstrate the highest degree of work ethic, dependability, and willingness to align with the Forum’s culture and operational approaches.
This is a position that will be central to the Forum’s scientific team, supporting the Forum’s Director, Scientific and Managing Directors, and Senior Scientific Leads in the key areas described below in the additional information section.
Job Summary:
The Research Associate (II) is responsible for planning, managing, and overseeing multiple concurrent large, multi-site, multi-disciplinary research programs, with the potential to compose, lead, and conduct research as an independent investigator or as a co-investigator within a faculty member's program. Develops collaborations and partnerships with research user groups to help shape research directions and ensure effective research transfer.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Initiate, design, and lead concurrent research programs.
- Formulate research questions and generate and test hypotheses.
- Make significant contributions to the design of research programs to answer questions and solve complex research problems.
- Publish results as first author in scientific peer-reviewed journals.
- Author scientific papers, funding proposals, and abstracts.
- Write research proposals, submit proposals to external funding agencies, and secure funding to conduct research through grants and contracts.
- Plan and coordinate all aspects of major research programs across multiple sites.
- Develop inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional, and inter-sectoral research collaborations.
- Negotiate research agreements and subcontracts to meet site and coordinating centre requirements.
- Develop budgets for research programs.
- Implement and maintain research program budgets. Create financial projections and make adjustments to research program budgets throughout the fiscal year.
- Troubleshoot problems at all stages of program development and implementation and modify protocol or program procedures to address challenges.
- Participate with a team in the development and authoring of research protocols.
- Design promotional strategies and related materials to encourage participation and support for research programs.
- Conduct quantitative and qualitative program participant interviews.
- Facilitate focus group sessions with program participants.
- Coordinate and manage the collection, delivery, entry, verification, analysis, and reporting of data.
- Oversee the design of data management systems.
- Apply specialized knowledge and scientific principles to review, critically appraise and interpret published literature.
- Develop estimates of time and resources for research programs.
- Use statistical software to analyze complex data and interpret results.
- Liaise between program centres and remote program sites and personnel.
- Develop presentations and present at meetings, seminars, and conferences.
- Conduct literature searches.
Supervision:
- Supervise and direct the activities of up to 4 continuing employees.
- Ongoing responsibility for hiring and supervising 10 or more casual employees at any one time.
- Provide orientation and show procedures to others.
Qualifications:
- Doctoral degree in a relevant field of study.
- Requires 7 years of relevant experience, including 1 year for full supervision.
Assets:
- Doctoral degree in health policy, including related and complementary fields such as implementation science, with an emphasis on evidence-informed decision-making and evidence-support systems is an asset.
- Experience working with McMaster University is an asset.
- Experience working in an organization that serves an ‘evidence intermediary’ role.
- Experience working with international organizations that focus on addressing priority health- or social-systems policy issues.
Additional Information:
The successful candidate must have the following qualifications:
- Five to seven years’ experience designing and conducting timely, demand-driven and contextualized evidence syntheses (including rapid evidence syntheses, rapid evidence profiles) to inform decision-making about health- and social-system priorities in national, provincial/regional and local jurisdictions, and in drawing on many forms of evidence – both local and global – in answering the many questions related to the priorities.
- Five to seven years’ experience designing and conducting evidence syntheses of the best-available global research evidence about priority health- and social-system challenges (rather than about clinical or public-health issues), and ideally experience in designing and conducting living evidence syntheses.
- Five to seven years’ experience overseeing large research teams (e.g., ten or more individuals made up of a mix of part-time and full-time staff) conducting timely, demand-driven and contextualized evidence syntheses and global evidence syntheses, including ensuring quality and methodological standards are met, and being the most responsible person for the work they produce.
- Five to seven years’ experience onboarding new researchers into teams responsible for conducting timely, demand-driven and contextualized evidence syntheses and global evidence syntheses, including developing training materials, tracking developmental progress on core tasks, and responding to questions to ensure the appropriate knowledge and skills are developed.
- Five to seven years’ experience leading core scientific and operational processes associated with deliberative stakeholder dialogues (that bring together health- and social-system government policymakers, system and organizational leaders, professional leaders, citizen leaders and research leaders to deliberate – with evidence as a key input – pressing health- and social-system challenges), and citizen panels (that elicit citizens’ views about these same challenges), including framing health- and social-system issues and synthesizing the best available evidence about a problem, options and implementation considerations in evidence briefs, conducting key informant interviews, drafting plain-language versions of evidence briefs as an input into citizen panels and documenting and thematically synthesizing insights from both deliberative dialogues and citizen panels in the form of dialogue and citizen-panel summaries.
- Five to seven years' experience working with government policymakers and system and organizational leaders to respond to their requests for timely, demand-driven evidence-syntheses (including demonstrated experience with helping to frame conversations with requestors in order to identify the question(s) they need answered, the types of evidence they’re interested in having synthesized, and the product format(s) they’re most interested in receiving).
- Experience organizing and administering multiple research projects simultaneously, particularly in an organization that is policy and systems oriented.
- Experience facilitating university-level academic courses; teaching duties may be required as part of the role.
- Experience contributing to online resources and multi-media communications.
The successful candidate must also demonstrate the following:
- Ability to work independently and collaborate within a team environment.
- Strong organizational and administrative abilities.
Excellent interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills.
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