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Job summary

Main area
Clinical & Public Health
Grade
NHS Medical & Dental: Consultant / AfC Band 9 / SCS1
Contract
Fixed term: 12 months
Hours
  • Full time
  • Part time
  • Job share
  • Flexible working
10 sessions per week (or 37.5 hours per week (AfC) or 37 hours per week (SCS1))
Job ref
919-KP-50001162-EXT
Employer
UK Health Security Agency
Employer type
Public (Non NHS)
Site
London or any other UKHSA site / Hybrid
Town
London
Salary
£75,000 - £126,281 per annum, pro rata
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
15/05/2024 23:59
Interview date
10/06/2024

Employer heading

UK Health Security Agency logo

Deputy Director – Health Equity and Inclusion Health

NHS Medical & Dental: Consultant / AfC Band 9 / SCS1

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a system leader for health security; taking action internationally to strengthen global health security, providing trusted advice to government and the public and reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by infectious disease, environmental hazards, and other threats to health.

UKHSA’s remit, as an agency with a global-to-local reach, is to protect the health of the nation from infectious diseases and other external threats to health. As the nation’s expert national health security agency UKHSA will:

  • Prevent: anticipate threats to health and help build the nation’s readiness, defences and health security
  • Detect: use cutting edge environmental and biological surveillance to proactively detect and monitor infectious diseases and threats to health
  • Analyse: use world-class science and data analytics to assess and continually monitor threats to health, identifying how best to control and mitigate the risks
  • Respond: take rapid, collaborative and effective actions nationally and locally to mitigate threats to health when they materialise
  • Lead: lead strong and sustainable global, national, regional and local partnerships designed to save lives, protect the nation from public health threats and reduce inequalities.

Job overview

This role focuses on leadership for health equity and inclusion health within UKHSA’s remit on communicable diseases and external health hazards. The postholder will lead the UKHSA response to systematic, avoidable and unjust differences in health security exposures, experience and outcomes between different groups of people, which can arise due to where individuals are born, grow, live, work and as a result of other key characteristics such as age or gender. 
 
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted previously known inequalities in infectious diseases outcomes and the relationship between health equity, communicable and non-communicable diseases. For example, smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are unequally distributed in our population. These illnesses and their underlying causes are associated with increased risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19.

To ensure more equitable health outcomes, action needs to be taken to address all the factors that contribute to inequalities – reducing differences in risk of exposure, vulnerability, in the consequences of the disease and of the control measures. Although there is a specific role for health and care services, much of the action required will be outside the health sector and both national and local government need to play a strong leadership role in mobilising formal and informal resources needed to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, other infectious diseases and hazards to health. 

Main duties of the job

The post is subject to the core competencies as set out by the Faculty of Public Health for Consultant appointments, (or other similar Professional Body if relevant) and the post holder will be expected to demonstrate expertise in all of them (Appendix A).  

The post holder is required to:  

  • Work with directors and divisional deputy directors to develop a clear vision and strategy for health equity and inclusion health in communicable diseases and external health hazards with measurable goals
  • Lead partnerships work both within UKHSA and externally with local, regional and national groups working in partnership with government departments (including the Office for Health Disparities, DHSC; DLUHC, DfE), local authorities (including Directors of Public Health), NHSE and the voluntary sector with a clear focus on priority groups
  • Support the development of appropriate organisational and system assurance for health equity for the areas of responsibility of UKHSA 
  • Work across UKHSA and with other partners in academia to develop a systematic approach to advanced public health intelligence (e.g. linked individual data and phenotyping rather than ecological data) and data driven health equity to ensure evidence-based policy development and implementation and ensure that there is timely monitoring and publication across all disease areas on inequalities to monitor whether efforts to reduce them are successful 

Working for our organisation

We pride ourselves as being an employer of choice, where Everyone Matters promoting equality of opportunity to actively encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce.   

UKHSA ethos is to be an inclusive organisation for all our staff and stakeholders. To create, nurture and sustain an inclusive culture, where differences drive innovative solutions to meet the needs of our workforce and wider communities. We do this through celebrating and protecting differences by removing barriers and promoting equity and equality of opportunity for all.  

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

  • Identify research needs and work with research funders, academia and system partners to enable funding 
  • Work within UKHSA and the wider system, alongside UKHSA’s policy team, to provide cross government leadership to ensure capability is built in all government departments to address wider determinants of health
  • Support the development, application and quality assurance of tools to enable the systematic assessment of health equity e.g. Health Equity Assessment Tool, Health Impact Assessment/Equality Impact Assessment 
  • Work across the public health system to develop comprehensive engagement to magnify the community voice, groups and leadership in the work of health equity and inequalities, focusing on inclusion health groups, protected characteristics and vulnerable people. 
  • Work with NIHR Health Protection Research Units to ensure consideration of health equity in their aims and objectives, and to support UKHSA in developing further insight and evidence for the impact and management of infectious diseases and health hazards on specific inclusion groups including those in particular high-risk settings eg Care Homes, the Prison estate etc. 
  • Work across UKHSA to provide a ‘People and pathogen’ approach, integrating delivery of services such as TB, blood borne viruses and sexual health for inclusion health groups; for example, by understanding spatial differences including food purchasing and poverty and relationship to gastrointestinal infections, developing interventions to reduce transmission of respiratory infections in multi-generational households and communities etc 
  • Develop a community engagement and research strategic plan and develop a framework for co-production of interventions for health protection – including awareness, immunisations, testing and management of infections 
  • Develop business cases/proposals for research /evaluation of interventions targeted at inclusion health groups  
  • As a system leader foster appropriate relationships and collaborations at national, regional and global levels, including building on UKHSA’s global work in health and justice to extend this to other areas of health equity and inclusion health. 
  • Ensure advice and support available to deliver effective public health interventions for vulnerable groups, both in UKHSA’s day to day and response work. 
  • Lead and manage a division of approximately 30 – 40 people and its associated budget covering a range of public health disciplines 
  • Work closely with the Deputy Director Place & Health Equity Policy to ensure an effective Health Equity Programme and associated Board. 
  • Participate fully in the development of both the HECG Directorate and CPH Group, as a member of both SLTs 
  • Participate in emergency response as needed/ appropriate eg as Incident Director or Strategic Response Director. 
  • Represent the Director or on occasion the CMA, at system- facing and internal meetings as required. 

Applicants are strongly advised to use the criteria in the Person Specification of the Job Description as sub-headings in their application to make it clear how they meet each of the selection criteria.

The successful candidate will be appointed to the point of the Consultant salary scale appropriate to their years of seniority or if from a background other than medicine to NHS Agenda for Change Band 9 or Civil Service SCS1.

Inclusion in the GMC Full and Specialist Register with a license to practice (or be eligible for registration within six months of interview) or Inclusion in the UK Public Health Register (UKPHR) for Public Health Specialists (or be eligible for registration within six months of interview).

If included in the GMC Specialist Register/ in a specialty other than public health medicine, candidates must have equivalent training and/or appropriate experience of public health practice.

Public Health Specialty Registrar applicants who are not yet on the GMC Specialist Register must provide verifiable signed documentary evidence that they are within 6 months of gaining entry at the date of interview; all other applicants must provide verifiable signed documentary evidence that they have applied for inclusion in the GMC.

External 

Open to all external applicants (anyone) from outside the Civil Service (including by definition internal applicants). 

 

 

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Inclusion in the GMC Full and Specialist Register with a license to practice/GDC Specialist List (or be eligible for registration within six months of interview) Or Inclusion in the UK Public Health Register (UKPHR) for Public Health Specialists (or be eligible for registration within six months of interview)
  • If included in the GMC Specialist Register/GDC Specialist List in a specialty other than public health medicine/dental public health, candidates must have equivalent training and/or appropriate experience of public health practice.
  • Public health specialty registrar applicants who are not yet on the GMC Specialist Register/GDC Specialist List in dental public health/UKPHR must provide verifiable signed documentary evidence that they are within 6 months of gaining entry at the date of interview; all other applicants must provide verifiable signed documentary evidence that they have applied for inclusion in the GMC/GDC/UKPHR specialist registers [see shortlisting notes below for additional guidance]
  • If an applicant is UK trained in Public Health, they must ALSO be a holder of a Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT), or be within six months of award of CCT by date of interview If an applicant is non-UK trained, they will be required to show evidence of equivalence to the UK CCT [see shortlisting notes below for additional guidance]
  • Applicants must meet minimum CPD requirements (i.e. be up to date) in accordance with Faculty of Public Health requirements or other recognised body
  • MFPH (or similar Professional Body) by examination, by exemption or by assessment
Desirable criteria
  • Masters in Public Health or equivalent

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria
  • Able to influence senior members including directors and CEOs
  • Able to both lead teams and to able to contribute effectively in teams led by junior colleagues
  • Commitment to work within a political system irrespective of personal political affiliations

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Delivery of successful change management programmes across organizational boundaries
  • Media experience demonstrating delivery of effective health behaviour or health promotion messages
  • Experience of using complex information to explain public health issues to a range of audiences

Skills

Essential criteria
  • Strategic thinker with proven leadership skills and operational nous
  • Able to demonstrate and motivate organisations to contribute to improving the public’s health and wellbeing through mainstream activities and within resources
  • Ability to lead and manage the response successfully in unplanned and unforeseen circumstances
  • Analytical skills able to utilize both qualitative (including health economics) and quantitative information
  • Ability to design, develop, interpret and implement strategies and policies

Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • In depth understanding of the health and care system and the relationships with both local national government
  • In depth knowledge of methods of developing clinical quality assurance, quality improvement, evaluation and evidence based public health practice
  • Strong and demonstrable understanding of interfaces between health, social care and key partners (dealing with wider determinants of health)
  • Understanding of the public sector duty and the inequality duty and their application to public health practice

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Purple SpaceApprenticeships logoNo smoking policyAge positiveImproving working livesMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident employerThe Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (enei) is the UK's leading employer network covering all aspects of equality and inclusion issues in the workplace.Carer Confident -AccomplishedHappy to Talk Flexible Working

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Shona Arora
Job title
Director of Health Equity & Clinical Governance
Email address
[email protected]
Additional information

Nicola Hodgkiss, Head of directorate Operations; [email protected]

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