Public Health Strategist PO6 TEMP

Public Health Strategist

We are looking for a Public Health Strategist to join our Public Health team for a period of one year, working on a portfolio including healthy weight / food poverty and mental health & wellbeing including suicide prevention.

Both of these are priorities for the Waltham Forest Health and Wellbeing Board and we have committed to developing new strategies in both areas in the next year. Therefore a background in either or both of these areas and experience of writing public health strategies would be desirable.

The Role

Examples of projects the Strategist may take forward include:

• Developing or refreshing public health strategies including healthy weight and mental wellbeing
• Identifying and engaging relevant stakeholders in the strategy development process
• Agreeing action plans and working with partners to ensure actions are implemented
• Writing reports for various committees including Health and Wellbeing Board, Health Scrutiny and others.
• Refreshing and developing Health and Wellbeing Board delivery subgroups for healthy weight and mental wellbeing to take forward development and delivery of public health strategies.

The post will sit within the Public Health Team but will involve working closely with other departments across the council (including Planning, Highways, Communications and others) and external partners (including the CCG, Barts Health, NELFT NHS Trust).

We invite applications from individuals who:

• Are skilled at managing relationships and negotiating across a wide range of departments and organisations
• Have strong writing skills and preferably have experience of developing public health strategies
• Have strong project management skills and experience of delivering and supporting public health initiatives.
• Who will contribute positively to the work of our dynamic public health team. 
• Ideally the person will be familiar with working in Waltham Forest or a borough with a similar demographic profile.   

Your application should set out how you meet the role and person specification.

Waltham Forest

Waltham Forest is a vibrant, diverse home to approximately 260,000 residents in East London, easily accessible from central London by train and underground, and was the 2019 London Borough of Culture and the MJ Local Authority of the Year. The Public Health team has well developed relationships across the organisation and with partners. Led by the Director of Public Health for Waltham Forest, the team is based in the Families Directorate.

The leaders of the borough are firmly committed to public health, and the principles of early intervention and prevention, making this an excellent place to work in collaboration to achieve genuine improvements for residents. Healthy weight and mental wellbeing are both priorities for the Health and Wellbeing Board and will be key aspects of our work to support recovery from COVID-19.

We are also a team committed to providing a stimulating environment within which to work, running monthly reflective practice sessions, journal clubs and providing opportunities for personal development through training, education, shadowing and on-the-job learning.

For further information please contact Russell Carter, Public Health Consultant on: russell.carter@walthamforest.gov.uk

We reserve the right to close any vacancies from further submissions, when we have received sufficient applications from which to make a shortlist. Please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role. If you have not heard from us within 6 weeks from the closing date please assume your application has been unsuccessful.

London Borough of Waltham Forest values and respects the diversity of its employees, and aims to recruit a workforce which reflects our diverse communities. We welcome applications irrespective of people's age, disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have policies and procedures in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process