Health Promotion Specialist in Bury St Edmunds

The post holder will support the design and delivery of effective health promotion (HP) and behaviour change communication (BCC) interventions appropriate to the needs of young people and seldom heard groups, including people of African/Caribbean heritage, commercial sex workers (CSW), gay, bisexual and men who have sex with men (GBMSM), and other groups at increased risk of poor sexual health outcomes.

Delivery will be through community engagement approaches such as outreach work and education workshops, including targeted interventions in various community settings to increase knowledge and awareness of sexual health and HIV, promote testing, highlight benefits of early HIV diagnosis, and increase uptake of broader sexual health services across Suffolk.

Main duties:

• Deliver HP/BCC outreach interventions to relevant communities, including HIV & STI testing, health promotion (including HIV awareness), inter-faith/faith-based work, GP engagement, campaign delivery/social marketing aligned with regional and national prevention programmes. All interventions will embed reduction of HIV stigma.
• Work closely with people from seldom heard groups, tailoring approaches to meet individual needs.
• Increase professional and public knowledge of key sexual health topics by delivering professional training days and community education sessions (virtual and face-to-face) with a sex-positive approach.
• Develop competencies to become an Assistant Practitioner (AP), enabling HIV/Syphilis point-of-care testing (POCT) and other testing in community settings, while adhering to safeguarding procedures and policies. The role does not require a registered clinician.
• Support educational establishments, parents/carers, and other professionals delivering RSHE; this includes direct delivery to young people and upskilling professionals and parents/carers via face-to-face sessions, webinars, and live web broadcasting.
• Deliver outreach and tailored interventions with young people in Suffolk to enhance knowledge around RSHE and SSHS access.
• Maintain and use systems to monitor and record HP/BCC interventions and contribute data for service monitoring reports.
• Establish and maintain relationships with partner agencies and professionally represent SSHS and partners at meetings and events, adhering to values and policies.
• Engage diverse communities using methods such as social media, radio, TV, events, and visits to venues and public sex environments.
• Manage resources to ensure HP/BCC interventions are deliverable across the team.
• Collaborate with Provide marketing to create social media resources and other marketing content for the service.
• Utilise service user involvement activities (focus groups, surveys, etc.) to gather feedback to shape SSHS.
• Manage workload, calendars, leave records, and communicate changes to the line manager.
• Maintain ongoing personal development related to the role, keeping aware of local and national campaigns and statistics on sexual health and HIV.
• Assist with campaigns and events such as World AIDS Day, National HIV Testing Week, Sexual Health Week, LGBT+ History Month, Pride, Black History Month, and other promotions.
• Deliver a condom distribution service (e.g., eC-Card) to increase access for young people and at-risk communities.
• Work flexibly to meet service needs across a wide geographical area, including evenings and weekends when required.

Person specification:

Qualifications:

• Hold a relevant Health Promotion qualification.

Work related knowledge and experience:

• Essential criteria: Experience of delivering and evaluating health promotion interventions to communities experiencing health inequalities. Experience of delivering education/training packages to professionals and/or community groups.
• Desirable criteria: Knowledgeable about HIV prevention, sexual health, contraception and other health needs of at-risk communities in the UK. A good level of knowledge about key national and local sexual health and HIV issues.

Skills and Attitude:

• Essential criteria: Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to communicate at different levels; ability to build and manage relationships with a range of stakeholders. Ability to manage and prioritise own workload and seek support from the wider team. Computer literacy in Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint; database entry skills. Good standards of accuracy, numeracy and literacy; ability to input data onto clinical and client databases.