Risk Communication and Community Engagement Advisor - Register

Do you have the expertise to lead and provide technical advice to our outbreak response specialist team deployment throughout our ongoing activities and interventions to help UK-Med deliver life-saving medical aid?

• Hours: UK-Med Register role, no guarantee of any work, but if deployed work will be full-time.

• Remuneration: £3,150 to £3,500 per month (dependent on experience)

• Duration: Register members who deploy will be offered fixed-term contracts. The duration will depend on the requirements of the response but most responses are between 4 and 12 weeks

• Location: Internationally and/or to any of the UK-Med responses.

UK-Med is a frontline medical aid charity. Born of the NHS, we’ve been working for over 30 years towards a world where everyone has the healthcare they need when crises or disasters hit.

In many of the countries in which UK-Med works there is an inadequate application of health promotion and community engagement strategies at the national and sub-national levels.

The primary purpose of this Health Promotion and Community Engagement Standard operating procedure is to describe the steps that staff should normally follow in support of countries with regard to the prevention, detection and response to acute public health events caused by an infectious disease or by other hazards.

There is a crucial need to include Health Promotion and Community Engagement (HPCE) as a component within health emergency preparedness and response action plan. According to the World Health Organization, HPCE involves a strategic communication mechanism in all the phases of any emergency; preparedness, response and recovery phases.

The Risk Communication and Community Engagement Advisor is overall responsible for leading and managing the design and direct implementation of all of UK-Med’s community engagement activities, during the UK-Med/EMT Outbreak Response Specialist Team deployment. This will include activities/interventions that are in accordance with national coordination, ensuring that there is alignment with any risk communication and community engagement strategic response plans that may already be in place. They will work closely with the operations team lead and WASH manager (if present) in a team environment within a variety of different contexts. They will also effectively engage with local partners and the community.

They will manage multiple streams of work and will oversee programming to support the adoption of behaviours, attitudes and increased knowledge about health challenges within the communities targeted. They will be responsible for ensuring continuous, easy access to information for the local population affected as well as their sensitisation to it. They will play a central role in building the local capacity of field staff (i.e. Ministry of Health or other NGOs), in areas related to the response, through training delivery.

You will be determined, high performing, compassionate and collaborative, as well as being committed to learning and supporting others to learn. Language skills will be an advantage.

We offer a competitive salary and benefits along with a friendly working environment and the opportunity to make a real difference through and influential role in humanitarian programming.

At the same time UK-Med tries to provide feedback to applicants and share with them where they have fallen short in the competitive process, it may be very difficult to provide individual feedback. Especially looking at the large number of applications UK-Med receives and the multiple recruitments taking place at the same time, specifically during times of ongoing emergency surges.