Assistant Project Director

Georgia State University • Atlanta, GA

16h • Onsite

About The Position

At the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC), we approach our work with a passion for being excellent, to positively impact people’s lives, and to find creative and innovative ways to learn and fulfill our goals. We are growing, and we are thrilled that you are interested in being a part of our team. We are surrounded by individuals empowered to use their expertise and talents to achieve our mission to integrate research, policy, and programs to advance health and well-being.
Are you ready for us? Are you seeking an opportunity with purpose and direction? If you are, we have the perfect opportunity for you! We hire great people from a wide variety of educational, career, and personal backgrounds, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it makes our team stronger.
The successful candidate for this position will lead complex health services research and evaluation projects, with responsibility for study design, implementation, and oversight. Our work involves analyzing real-world administrative health care data, evaluating public health programs and policy impacts, and translating findings for diverse audiences, including policymakers and health care systems. The successful candidate will execute analyses on administrative health care data, supervise junior research staff, ensure ethical data compliance, and manage high-stakes reporting and publication efforts. As a key representative of the center, this position will collaborate with leadership to advance research strategies and strengthen data practices.
This is an Atlanta-based, in-office position.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in administrative health care data, including claims data (e.g., Medicaid, Medicare, commercial insurance, or all payer claims databases), hospital discharge data (e.g., HCUP data), commercially available electronic health care databases (e.g., IQVIA or Epic).
• Expertise in prospective survey creation, dissemination, and analysis.
• Ability to both lead and execute project work, including mentoring teammates.
• Experience with the full lifecycle of acquiring and using data for health services research, including negotiating and executing data use agreements.
• Ability to draft and manage large-scale evaluation plans, analytic plans, technical specifications, and standard operating procedures.
• Ability to ensure and train others on HIPAA-compliant data practices.
• Highly technical programming skills in SAS (especially PROC SQL). Additional knowledge of R or Python is desirable.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to lead report writing and dissemination of findings.
• If not already familiar with implementation science frameworks (e.g., PRISM, RE-AIM, or CFIR), ability to learn them from an applied perspective.
• Evidence of prior publication in academic, peer-reviewed journals
• Technical mastery of the following data skills: · Relational data management, including merging multiple variable types, aggregation and disaggregation of data, deduplicating data, and summarizing data by groups (for example, counting, averaging, summing) · Working with dates and calculating time differences between observations, filtering datasets and observations by dates for reporting/analysis purposes · Reshaping data from wide to long and long to wide · Working with both cross-sectional and longitudinal data
• Ability to lead analyses comparing two or more groups (t-tests, ANOVA, Chi-squared, etc.)
• Ability to lead staff implementing research and evaluation in the general linear modeling framework (regression modeling [OLS, logistic, Poisson, negative binomial, etc.], interrupted time series analysis, difference-in-differences models).
• Bachelor's degree and three years of related experience; or a combination of education and related experience.

Nice To Haves

• Doctoral degree in public health, health policy, public administration, health economics, social science, or a related field, and two to five years of leadership experience in health services research or evaluation of public health programs.
• Prior use of Medicaid claims data and understanding of managed care and fee-for-service health care policy.
• Prior experience supervising others (including junior staff, graduate research assistants, interns, and teammates).
• Ability to lead publications for peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Responsibilities

• Oversee design and management of complex, long-term health services research and evaluation studies, upholding scientific ethics and responsibility (e.g., institutional review board approvals and HIPAA compliance).
• Assess the implementation, effectiveness, and impact of public health programs and complex health policy changes.
• Utilize various administrative health care data sources in day-to-day work.
• Supervise research staff on executing quantitative research and evaluations.
• Translate and communicate research and evaluation results for various audiences, including policymakers, academic audiences, community-based organizations, health care providers, and health care systems.
• Responsible for report writing, including to high-stakes clients and manuscripts submitted to peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
• Serve as a lead communicator, representing the center and projects with high-stakes partners and clients at the local, state, and national levels.
• Collaborate with leadership to improve data practices at the center, including implementation of the center’s broader research strategy.
• Identify funding opportunities and lead proposal writing to acquire funding for scientific projects, including federal agencies (e.g., CDC, NIH, CMS, HRSA, etc.), state agencies, and foundations.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary.
• Generous benefits, including health, dental, vision, tuition assistance, retirement, etc.
• Professional development opportunities and mentorship.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level