Research Fellow (PhD or Postdoctoral) - LMIC Family Planning

About the role

Department: Client Engagement. Location: Remote - Global. The Research Fellow will join Surgo Health’s Gates Foundation‑funded Family Planning initiative, a multi‑country study in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria (Kano, Kaduna, Lagos) and Pakistan (Sindh), focused on producing a submission‑ready manuscript for a peer‑reviewed journal.

Responsibilities

• Develop and lead a manuscript around an agreed priority research question, building on existing analyses and data and conducting additional analyses as needed.
• Produce a submission‑ready, publication‑quality manuscript for a peer‑reviewed journal.
• Translate complex survey and causal‑modeling findings into insights relevant to global health policy and program design.
• Contribute to Surgo Health’s growing portfolio of family planning research and thought leadership in low‑ and middle‑income country (LMIC) contexts.
• Synthesize and translate existing findings and/or generate new analyses to deepen understanding of the mechanisms, risk factors, and protective factors shaping family planning behaviors and outcomes.
• If applicable, utilize rigorous quantitative and/or causal inference methods appropriate to the research question.
• Draft and revise a manuscript for submission to a peer‑reviewed journal, incorporating feedback from Surgo’s research team.
• Collaborate with Surgo’s research scientists for methodological guidance and framing.

Requirements

PhD candidate, postdoctoral researcher, or early‑career researcher in a relevant field (e.g., public health, demography, economics, biostatistics, epidemiology, data science).

Qualifications

Strong experience in quantitative analysis, survey data, and/or causal inference methods.

Skills

• Quantitative analysis of survey data.
• Experience with causal inference techniques (e.g., Bayesian networks, causal forests, propensity score matching, doubly robust/DoubleML, G‑computation).
• Ability to develop and lead manuscript writing for peer‑reviewed journals.
• Skill in translating complex findings into policy‑relevant insights.
• Familiarity with family planning research in LMIC settings.

Benefits

• Access to de‑identified, multi‑country family planning survey data under a data use agreement.
• Codebooks and methodological documentation.
• Regular check‑ins with Surgo’s research team for methodological guidance and feedback on drafts.
• Methodological and analytic support.
• Guidance on funder framing and positioning.
• Co‑authorship and publication support.
• Opportunity to present progress to the broader research team.
• Weekly check‑ins with Surgo project lead(s) (twice per week).
• Invitation to join Surgo FP analytics team meetings.
• Leadership exposure: two scheduled opportunities to present findings to Hannah Kemp (Chief Strategy Officer, Client Engagement) and Mokshada Jain (Vice President of Global Health).
• Optional up to two meetings with Vincent Huang (Senior Director of Data Science & AI) to discuss analytic approach and findings.

Pay

Stipend amount: $6,000 total, paid in four equal installments of $1,500 upon completion of each milestone (scope of work confirmed, preliminary results/draft findings, first draft manuscript, two rounds of internal review revisions incorporated and submission‑ready manuscript delivered).

Schedule

Project duration: maximum 17 weeks (~4 months). Earliest start date: Oct 15, 2026. Timeline milestones: Weeks 1‑2 – confirmed scope of work (or analytic plan); Week 6 or earlier – preliminary results or draft findings (midpoint review); Week 12 or earlier – draft initial manuscript for internal reviews; Week 16‑17 or earlier – final submission‑ready manuscript delivered.