Volunteer Medical Liaison: NHS & Community Health Connector in Portsmouth

Help bridge the gap between NHS care and community support. As our volunteer Medical/NHS Liaison, you’ll connect with local clinicians, build referral networks, and champion endo awareness across the South Coast. Make a real, lasting healthcare impact!

This role is pivotal to Endometriosis South Coast (ESC) because it bridges the critical gap between medical diagnosis and everyday community support. While NHS clinicians provide vital medical treatment, patients often leave appointments feeling isolated, overwhelmed, and unsure where to turn for ongoing guidance. By building strong, trusted relationships with healthcare professionals, the Medical/NHS Liaison ensures that ESC becomes a recognized, complementary support pathway alongside clinical care.

Here is specifically how this role drives ESC’s mission and operational goals:

• Establishes Formal Referral Pathways
• Identifies and Nurtures Clinical Champions
• Expands Outreach Through Endo Awareness Packs
• Ensures Rigorous Governance and Safety

Ultimately, this role transforms ESC from a valuable local charity into an integrated community healthcare partner, ensuring no one across the South Coast has to navigate endometriosis alone.

What are we looking for?

Essential:

• Passion for ESC’s mission and a genuine commitment to making a positive impact for people with endometriosis.
• Comfortable building professional relationships with clinicians and NHS stakeholders.
• Clear understanding of the boundary between ESC’s peer-support offer and clinical care.
• Understanding of safeguarding principles and a clear escalation mindset.
• An understanding of GDPR and data handling responsibilities, particularly around clinical-adjacent information.
• Commitment to upholding ESC’s values of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Desirable:

• A clinical or healthcare background (e.g. nursing, primary care, women's health), or experience working with NHS systems.
• Familiarity with the South Coast NHS landscape (ICSs, PCNs, Women's Health Hubs).
• Experience with referral pathway development or health partnership work.
• Knowledge of the South Coast community or lived experience of endometriosis.

What will you be doing?

Endometriosis South Coast (ESC) is an inclusive charity dedicated to supporting people along the South Coast who are navigating the diagnosis journey or living with endometriosis. We know that this condition can be isolating and often misunderstood — so everything we do is built around ensuring no one faces it alone. Through awareness campaigns, an active online community, monthly support meetings, and targeted fundraising, we work to make a genuine difference in the lives of those affected.

Our work is guided by four core commitments:

• Spreading awareness of a debilitating and frequently overlooked condition;
• Supporting and funding ongoing research;
• Providing accessible education and peer support through our monthly community meetings;
• Fundraising to sustain and grow our services for the future.

Role Overview:

The Medical/NHS Liaison supports ESC’s Partnership Strategy by building relationships with clinicians and NHS bodies across the South Coast — including local Endometriosis Centres (Portsmouth, Southampton, Brighton, Chichester), Primary Care networks and GP training hubs, menstrual health nurses, and ICSS Women’s Health Hubs (Hampshire & Isle of Wight, Sussex, Dorset). This role is central to ESC’s ambition to be seen as a complementary support pathway alongside NHS care — never a replacement for it — and to identify clinical champions who actively refer into ESC.

Because clinical relationships carry data ethics and safeguarding sensitivities, this role works under the oversight of ESC’s Medical Advisory Panel (MAP), with any new clinical partnership or piece of clinical content escalated for MAP review and Founder sign-off.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Clinical Stakeholder Mapping: Build and maintain a stakeholder map of clinicians (GPs, nurses, consultants, pelvic physios) and NHS systems (ICSs, Women’s Health Hubs) relevant to ESC’s work. Identify and prioritise local Endometriosis Centres, PCNs, GP training hubs, and menstrual health nurses for relationship-building. Keep the stakeholder map current as contacts and organisational structures change.
• Relationship Building & Clinical Champions: Build relationships with clinicians who can act as champions for ESC, actively referring into ESC’s services. Provide low-burden, high-value touchpoints for clinical contacts — such as short education sessions, awareness packs, and clear referral routes — always positioning ESC as complementary to, not a replacement for, NHS care. Support initial conversations with ICSS Women’s Health Hubs and Public Health teams (Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton) as part of ESC’s wider external affairs engagement.
• Awareness Pack Distribution & Referral Pathways: Coordinate distribution of ESC’s Endo Awareness Packs to priority clinical sites. Work to establish at least one NHS or primary care site actively signposting patients to ESC. Support the development of clear referral pathways between clinical contacts and ESC’s support services.
• Governance & Escalation: Escalate any new clinical partnership, piece of clinical content, or data-sharing arrangement to the MarComs Trustee for referral to the Medical Advisory Panel and Founder sign-off. Declare any conflicts of interest promptly in line with ESC’s Conflicts of Interest Policy. Handle all personal and clinical-adjacent information with the utmost care and in full compliance with GDPR.