Health Equity and Involvement Manager (maternity cover) (Hiring Immediately)

We're the UK's specialist blood cancer charity and our vision is clear: we’re here to beat blood cancer. We fund world-class research; provide information and support to patients and their loved ones; and raise awareness of blood cancer.

This is an exciting opportunity to shape our approach to health equity and involvement across Blood Cancer UK. As part of our Health Systems Improvement Team, you’ll help develop a new programme of work focused on improving health systems and services, ensuring the voices and experiences of people affected by blood cancer, particularly those from underserved and under-represented communities, meaningfully influence the change we want to see.

You’ll be our go-to expert on health equity, inclusion and involvement, providing advice and support across the organisation. You’ll identify inequalities in access, experience and outcomes, help teams understand the barriers faced by different communities, and ensure an equity lens is embedded across our programmes, services and partnerships.

You’ll also lead our organisation-wide approach to involvement, working with our Involvement Network and EDI Community Voices Group to ensure people affected by blood cancer have meaningful opportunities to shape our work. You’ll oversee the development and continuous improvement of our approach, champion best practice across the organisation and line manage our Involvement Officer.

This is a hybrid role, with an expectation of travelling to our office and attending meetings across the UK approximately 2–4 times per month.

We are committed to actively promoting equality, diversity, and inclusivity. In line with our strategy we welcome approaches from individuals from underrepresented groups, including minority communities, and applicants with a disability, to better reflect the community we serve and help broaden our perspectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify and translate health inequities in access, experience and outcomes for blood cancer patients using available lived experience insights, services data and external evidence, internal insights, highlighting priority populations, unmet needs and structural barriers across the patient pathway.
• Apply an equity lens across all system innovation programmes and partnerships, working closely with the Health Systems Programme Lead to ensure initiatives are designed to reduce, not reinforce, inequities.
• Ensure lived experience is meaningfully incorporated into programmes and projects through delivering and overseeing delivery of high-quality involvement activity. Provide guidance on proportionate, inclusive and effective approaches to involvement, and ensure lived experience perspectives are clearly represented in programme design, decision-making and evaluation.
• Oversee and deliver on the development and continuous improvement of the organisation-wide involvement programme, embedding involvement principles, standards and approaches across senior stakeholder groups and health equity initiatives. Line manage and develop the Involvement Officer to implement best practice and areas of continuous improvement to deliver organisational involvement priorities
• Provide expert guidance on inclusion, accessibility and reducing disparities in proposed interventions, supporting internal teams and external partners to identify equity risks and opportunities including within the development of the systems change programme.
• Develop and apply approaches to assess the equity impact of programmes and system change, contributing to evaluation frameworks that measure outcomes across different population groups.
• Capture and articulate learning on what works to reduce inequities, supporting thought leadership to inform internal strategy and external influence.
• Build understanding and confidence across teams and external partners in applying an equity lens to their work, developing practical tools, guidance and resources to support equitable programme design, and promoting equity and involvement across the organisation.
• Line manage and develop the Involvement Officer to ensure excellent levels of engagement and performance and that objectives are achieved.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Knowledge

• Strong understanding of health inequalities and their drivers (e.g. socio-economic, demographic, structural barriers to care)
• Understanding of inclusion, accessibility and culturally competent practice
• Expert knowledge of approaches to involvement and co-design principles

Skills

• Ability to clearly articulate inequities and lived experience in a way that drives action
• Ability to spot exclusion risks and apply inclusive thinking across varied programmes, including those with a systems change focus

Experience

• Experience working in health inequalities or inclusion roles
• Experience embedding lived experience to inform service or programme design
• Experience contributing to or advising on service improvement, transformation or programme development, preferably applying an equity and inclusion lens to complex or systems-focused work.
• Experience working with multiple stakeholders in complex environments