The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (Women's Health) (DASH-WH) provides oversight, direction, and coordination of activities pertaining to women's health issues and policies across the Department.  The DASH-WH is the principal advisor and confidant to the ASH in planning, determining, and assessing health policies and programs that affect the health needs of women across their lifespan.  The incumbent also directs the Office on Women's Health (OWH), which is established within OASH.  OWH envisions that all women and girls are healthier and have a better sense of well-being; to this end, it provides leadership to promote health equity for women and girls through sex- and gender-specific approaches.  As OWH Director, the DASH-WH manages work groups and task teams, leads the HHS Coordinating Committee on Women's Health, and provides coordination and guidance on women's health issues to other HHS components.  Day-to-day duties include directing the specific programs, projects, and activities carried out by OWH.

 MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The DASH-WH, on behalf of the ASH and of the Secretary, as requested:

(1)  Provides executive leadership, guidance, and oversight on a range of processes and functions across HHS that relate to women's health.  These processes and functions include review, analysis, and evaluation of policies, programs, and activities addressing women's health;

(2)  Provides executive leadership, management, and direction of procedures, programs, activities, and resources as Director of the Office on Women's Health (OWH);

(3)  Interacts with Regional Health Administrators to ensure effective regional representation of OWH programs;

(4)  Serves as the principal advisor to the ASH and serves as staff advisor to, and spokesperson for, the Secretary on women's health issues;

(5)  Advises the ASH on activities, programs, and policies across HHS;

(6)  Directs, influences, and assists the ASH on evidence-based policy development related to women's health;

(7)  Represents HHS in a variety of settings at Federal, national, state, and local levels;

(8)  Conducts strategic planning with OWH, HHS, and external partners to ensure relevance, timeliness, and feasibility of ongoing programmatic direction;

(9)  Fosters collaboration and partnerships within and outside of HHS that leverage OWH and Departmental resources to reduce leading causes of illness, disability, and premature death for women;

(10)  Maintains awareness of developments in biomedical, behavioral, and public health sciences and health policy, reporting to the ASH on developments that may be long-range, but of potential interest and applicability to women's health;

(11)  Oversees the preparation of action plans, white papers, literature reviews, and other reports for the consideration of the ASH and HHS leadership, Congress, and the public, including an annual report to Congress on HHS Activities to Improve Women's Health as Required by the Affordable Care Act;

(12)  Maintains ongoing, close, and effective liaison and communications with the heads of appropriate organizations and individuals in the public and private sectors, with the goals of both communicating HHS policies, goals, priorities and programs, as well as conveying to the ASH feedback and insights from these sectors;

(13)  Serves as the Designated Federal Officer for the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee; and

(14)  Ensures adherence to HHS guidelines by all OWH communications tools, including print and electronic media.

(15)  Establishes science-based programs and evaluates their impact in addressing critical gender/sex based health disparities that particularly affect women; and

(16)  Participates with HHS-wide efforts such as Healthy People 2020 to ensure representation, measurement, and communication of gender/sex based disparities in health status and other indicators of well-being.

Conditions of employment

• U.S. Citizenship is required.
• Background and/or Security Investigation required.
• Must complete 1 year SES probationary period, if not previously completed.
• This position requires completion of public financial disclosure report.
• Application package must be received by closing date of the announcement.

Qualifications

To be qualified for this position, you must provide evidence of experience in a managerial capacity with responsibility for providing supervisory direction to a large and diverse organization responsible for promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in the administration of programs and operations on a national level.  This experience must be evidenced by sophisticated analytical skills, superior written and oral communication skills, excellent judgment, and experience in interacting with government and non-government officials.  Typically, experience of this nature is gained at or above the GS-15 grade level in the Federal service, or its equivalent with state or local government, the private sector, or nongovernmental organizations. 

Unless you are currently serving under a career SES appointment, are eligible for reinstatement into the SES, or have successfully completed a SES Candidate Development Program (CDP) approved by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), you must provide a narrative statement covering each of the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) and Professional/Technical Qualifications (PTQs) in order to receive consideration for the position.  Current or former career SES members are not required to address the ECQs, but must address the PTQs.

Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Officers interested in applying for this position to serve in the SES must resign their commission if selected.  If you are applying under this option, you must address both the PTQs and ECQs in this announcement.  Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Officers interested in performing the duties of the position within the Commissioned Corps must address the PTQs but are not required to address the ECQs. 

Professional/Technical Qualifications

1. Provides medical and scientific insight on the research and evaluation of health services, quality measurement, improvement, and patient safety.

2. Leads research and provides authoritative advice/guidance on extramural research programs emphasizing medical, behavioral, financial and policy determinants of health care quality.

3. Develops and execute grants, contracts, cooperative agreements, and other mutually beneficial and appropriate mechanisms to stimulate medical research activities. Serves as the project officer, co-project officer or principal investigator (PI) as required.

4. Develops research, business partnerships and coalitions with Federal agencies, state and local organizations to discuss health services research strategies and programs.

5. Represents the agency/organization in professional meetings, conferences, and task forces with representatives of domestic and national organizations. In doing so, delivers keynote speeches, participates on relevant panels, and prepares substantive position papers/reports and briefing materials on health related topics to quality-related health services research. All products must be aligned to the Department and organizational mission.

Additional information on the proper preparation of ECQs is available by going to the Office of Personnel Management's web site at http://www.opm.gov/ses/references/GuidetoSESQuals_2012.pdf.  Applicants are encouraged to follow the Challenge, Context, Action, and Result model outlined in the guide. 

You will be prompted to provide narrative descriptions including specific examples of your experience, education, and accomplishments that are applicable to each of the PTQs and ECQs.  Your examples should be clear and emphasize your level of responsibilities, scope and complexity of programs managed, program accomplishments with results of your actions, policy initiatives and level of contacts.  In addition, your responses should highlight your experience, training, and achievements in conjunctions with the resume you provide. 

Executive Core Qualifications

Fundamental Competencies: The following competencies are the foundation for success in each of the ECQs.  Interpersonal Skills; Oral Communication; Integrity/Honesty; Written Communication; Continual Learning; and Public Service Motivation.  These Fundamental Competencies are cross-cutting and should be addressed over the course of your ECQ narratives.

1.  Leading Change:  This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organization, to meet organizational goals.  Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to establish an organizational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment.  (Competencies:  conflict management, leveraging diversity, developing others, team building).

2.  Leading People:  This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organization's vision, mission, and goals.  Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts.  (Competencies:  conflict management, leveraging diversity, developing others, team building). 

3.  Results Driven:  This core qualification involves the ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations.  Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to make decisions that produce high quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks.  (Competencies:  accountability, customer service, decisiveness, entrepreneurship, problem solving, technical credibility).

4.  Business Acumen: This core qualification involves the ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations.  Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to make decisions that produce high quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks.  (Competencies:  financial management, human capital management, technology management). 

5.  Building Coalitions:  This core qualification involves the ability to build coalitions internally and with other Federal agencies, State and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organizations, foreign governments, or international organizations to achieve common goals.  (Competencies:  partnering, political savvy, influencing/negotiating).

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

Your resume and narrative responses to the Professional/Technical qualifications and the five Executive Core Qualifications are an integral part of the process for determining your basic and specialized qualifications for the position.  Responses that are not supported by your resume will eliminate you from consideration.  Your application will be evaluated in the following manner: 

1.  Application packages will be reviewed for completeness (incomplete or late packages will not receive further consideration). 

2.  Basic qualifications review.  Your resume and narrative responses to the PTQ's and ECQ's will be reviewed to ensure you meet the Specialized Experience Requirement.  If you do not meet this requirement, you will not receive further consideration.