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Professional profiles in health cooperation
- Last updated:March 17, 2025
One of the main sectors of international development cooperation and humanitarian action is health. Although there is a lot of heterogeneity among organizations and among the jobs they offer, in general, someone with a professional profile linked to health can work in four broad categories. Three of them (provision of health services, coordination of projects and health programs, and some "generalist" positions) are categories located in the field, while there is a fourth, technical advisor, which is usually performed from headquarters.
Health cooperation professionals with a direct care role in the field
This group includes family doctors and other specialties (such as pediatrics, gynecology, anesthesia or surgery), nursing staff, midwives, epidemiologists, pharmacists and psychologists, among others. Their work usually consists of performing tasks similar to those they would perform in a hospital or health center in their country of origin. However, they do this in a humanitarian context that is very different and very demanding, where resources are often scarce.
Although this is the profile best known to the general public, in reality only a minority of expatriate aid workers are dedicated to providing health services directly. In the vast majority of cases, these positions are filled by national health personnel, from the country where the intervention takes place. They not only know the local language and important sociocultural aspects, but also the most common health problems and the way they are usually dealt with given the conditions in which they work. The presence of expatriate health personnel is particularly relevant for covering technical areas where there are hardly any local specialists. It can also be advantageous to bring in people with extensive previous experience in other countries (for example in epidemic outbreaks of the same pathology), or to help in the supervision and training of the national health team.
This type of position usually requires formal health education and several years of professional practice in the country of origin or others. Although experience in humanitarian contexts is desirable, this is not usually a prerequisite. Instead, it is common for humanitarian organizations recruiting this type of profile to offer mandatory courses. This training usually covers essential aspects of humanitarian action and cooperation in complex crises and highly insecure environments, as well as key principles and procedures of the organization itself. These positions generally require a deployment of several months or even more than a year (similar to other positions). They should not be confused with the international volunteer opportunities offered by some organizations.
Health professionals for program coordination in the field
This group of professionals performs many different tasks related to the management of health projects and the leadership of the teams that implement them. As such, it includes professionals from different professional areas, but almost always with experience and training in public health and project cycle management in humanitarian crises.
Basic academic education and profile required: public health and project management
Public health training is often a prerequisite because of the importance of having a clear vision of the importance of population health (beyond the health of the individual, or mere biomedical aspects), the functioning of health systems and their preventive and curative services, global health priorities, management and governance at different levels (including health centers, district health areas and ministries of health), the multi-causality of morbidity and mortality, social determinants of health, primary health care, universal health coverage, or preparedness and response to epidemics, among many other aspects. This type of position is not usually restricted to medical personnel, but is often open to many different paths that converge in public health.
The training or experience in managing the project cycle is also key. It is these people who, depending on the specifics of the position, are in charge of the assessment of population needs, the design and writing of projects, the implementation of activities and their follow-up and monitoring. The position responsible for coordination - at different levels - generally manages and leads a team of people, and collaborates with other key people in the team (such as finance, human resources or logistics). Although the project/program coordinator relies on these other functions to carry out their work, it is essential that he/she knows how to prepare a budget, a job description (for the people in the team he/she coordinates), a purchase order or a report, as well as keep good control of the progress of the indicators and the achievement of the expected results.
Project coordinator/manager
The position requiring the least experience within this category is usually health project coordinator. Typically, this role will focus on implementing a project that others have already designed, and therefore will be located directly in the area where the activities are implemented. Typically, for any of these positions, even small projects, at least one or two years of previous experience is required. Increasingly, these positions are being filled by national staff. In the case of particularly large projects (usually development projects with several years of implementation), with large teams of people and financial volume, the role of project coordinator usually falls to a person with extensive experience in project management and institutional representation, whether or not they have a background in public health (although this is always desirable), accompanied by technical health staff to support them.
Program coordinator/manager
Sometimes several projects or a province/region of the country are overseen by a health program coordinator/manager. The organization's health program in that province or region may consist of multiple project activities, with different time frames and funders. In these cases, the program manager assumes a somewhat more strategic role than the project coordinator; instead of focusing on the execution of activities, he/she must ensure the proper progress of all projects and the achievement of their objectives, while at the same time assessing the evolution of the context and identifying possible new actions and projects to be designed in order to seek funding.
It is also common for this position to cover institutional representation functions in regional or provincial technical forums (such as working groups) and before local health authorities. A program coordination position, in addition to training in public health and project cycle management, usually requires several years of experience performing a similar function in other humanitarian contexts. Knowledge of the local context is also desirable.
National medical or health coordinator
The highest position in this group is usually the national health coordinator, or national medical coordinator. This position, generally located in the capital, has a high component of strategic planning, of institutional representation (to national health authorities and in clusters or other national working groups), and of support and supervision to the technical health teams of the different provinces and projects. This type of position is usually the most senior in this category, requiring extensive experience (often starting from project and program coordination positions, with a progressive increase in responsibilities).
Despite the fact that they may have the same name, there are big differences in the level of responsibility, required experience and remuneration (among other things) between seemingly similar positions "on paper". This depends on the organizations, but also on the size of the organization on a country or provincial basis, or the volume of a project. The type of work performed (and the profile required) also varies greatly depending on the working modality of the organization in the country in question; a project with directly implemented mobile health teams is not the same as a project that, under a localization, is carried out through a local partner organization with its own team that must be supervised and accompanied, or a project to support or strengthen public health services, without direct provision of health care.
Health cooperation profesionals for management roles
In some international organizations that are eminently medical or health-related, it is often indicated as "desirable" that senior generalist positions (such as a Head of Mission or Country Coordinator or a Head of Base) or technical positions that are not necessarily health-related (such as in advocacy or monitoring and evaluation, for example), have a health background of some kind, mainly in public health. This, which is rare in multisectoral organizations (that do not work exclusively in health), may be due to an alignment with the principles and values of the organization, or to the fact of being able to facilitate institutional relations with the health authorities of a country.
Health cooperation professionals based at headquarters
Health technical advisors
The national teams are usually supported and supervised by the technical, program and operations teams of the regional offices (if any) or directly from the organization's headquarters. Specifically, to support the national health coordinators or national medical coordinators in the different countries, there are usually health technical advisors.
These advisory positions may be more or less specialized, depending on the organization and its needs, in areas such as sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, mental health, pharmacy, or health systems strengthening. However, it is also common to have general health technical advisory positions by geographic area, with some familiarity with the socioeconomic, political and epidemiological situation of various countries, or simply supporting countries with a common language (such as French or English). Some of these positions can also lead operational research initiatives, which help to generate scientific evidence in global health and humanitarian action.
These positions, based in global or regional headquarters offices, are usually filled by health staff with different backgrounds and training, but with public health training, training or extensive practice in project cycle management, knowledge of humanitarian system architecture, and considerable experience in different "field" positions (such as national health coordinators or health program coordinators) in multiple countries (and very often, multiple organizations). It is also common for them to speak several languages (Spanish, English and French - at least - is very common).
They travel to the field with relative continuity, from a minimum of 3-4 short trips per year (for follow-up visits, exploratory missions, participation in training workshops with the national team, identification and design of new projects, or evaluation and learning initiatives), to many more.
Flying and emergency response personnel
There are also flying positions or positions that are part of an emergency response team. These posts, despite being based at headquarters, may spend most of their time "in the field", chaining trips ranging from two weeks to three months. They not only provide direct support and reinforcement to national teams, but also help to establish and train them in emergency response.
Sometimes they also work temporarily filling vacancies at key moments, or taking charge of the immediate response to a new crisis that the existing team cannot take on (in addition to their regular work). Some of this work is carried out, generally for short periods of time, on a consultancy basis.
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