Environmental Public Health Practitioner

Pay grade: Civil Service HEO National - £33,422- £40,731

Job overview

The Environmental Hazards and Emergencies (EHE) Department provides authoritative scientific advice to government, NHS and other bodies. EHE's mission is to prepare for and prevent future health security hazards, strengthen capability and respond to chemical and environmental emergencies, building the UK's capacity on health security for new and long-term exposure to environmental hazards.

EHE comprises of multidisciplinary teams of scientists working across various locations in England and Wales. The Department is responsible for providing specialist advice at local, national and international level on public health impacts of acute and chronic non-infectious environmental exposures. Scientists collaborate with academia on research and evidence reviews to underpin this advice, including the National Institute of Health Research Health Protection Research Units (HPRU). Many scientists sit on cross government and multi-agency expert groups relevant to environmental public health.

The post holder, located in the EHE Cardiff team, will:

• Respond to chemical and environmental hazard incidents and enquiries which threaten people's health, through provision of public health risk assessments. These might involve chemical fires, chemical contamination of the environment, or deliberate release of chemicals.
• Contribute to development of evidence and provision of expert environmental public health advice to government, various stakeholders and members of the public.

Main duties of the job

Incident Response

• Contribute to UKHSA Emergency Preparedness Resilience & Response arrangements as a Category 1 responder
• Collaborate within EHE, relevant regulators and others to promote an effective public health response service, providing advice on public health protection
• Undertake environmental public health risk assessments for acute & chronic chemical and environmental hazard exposures to prevent or mitigate public health risk

Publication & communication

• Review environmental permit and planning applications; health impact or environmental impact assessments providing advice on threats to public health
• Plan and carry out, with support, complex scientific studies of high quality to formulate robust evidence based environmental public health advice
• Contribute to research papers for submission to peer reviewed journals
• Participate in scientific meetings and conferences, presenting papers describing research activities.

Training

• Disseminate information and knowledge gathered from participation at workshops, meetings, seminars and conferences to colleagues
• Assist in training provision on environmental public health issues for a range of stakeholders, in support of EHE training courses
• Assist in reviewing training materials to improve training outcomes
• Participate at multi-agency training including emergency planning, chemical incident exercises and other technical workshops

This list is not exhaustive.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Essential criteria:

• Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) in a science or environmental science related subject
• Analysis of scientific and technical data
• Experience of scientific project work
• Ability to observe and question when gathering information, and identifying key issues
• Excellent organisational skills and the ability to manage own workload
• Good presentation skills with experience of creating and giving presentations to varied audiences such as team colleagues and external stakeholders
• An understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships
• Proficient working knowledge of Microsoft Office

Desirable criteria:

• Broad general knowledge of environmental sciences and environmental public health
• Experience of scientific research and development
• Ability to write evidence based scientific material
• Evidence of continuing professional development

For more details including selection process and interview information, please click "apply" where you will be redirected to the full job advert on HealthJobsUK