Overview

At Impact on Urban Health, we’re committed to achieving health equity by helping urban areas become healthier places for everyone to live. We take a place-based approach to improving urban health. This helps us understand how the local environment affects people’s health and to find solutions that work in practice.

The south London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark have been our home for over five centuries. It is here that we work with organisations, groups and individuals – local, national and international – who are committed to achieving health equity in inner-city areas.

To drive better health in cities, we pay particular attention to the context in which people live and the wider determinants of their health, from finance and employment, to access to nutritious food and air quality.

We have four programmes that each focus on one of the following health issues:

• childhood obesity

• multiple long-term conditions

• the health effects of air pollution

• adolescent mental health

We also have a research and development team that works across our programmes.

Job description

At Impact on Urban Health we have a team of Portfolio Managers. Each Portfolio Manager, coached by a Programme Director, builds part of a programme strategy, co-develops projects with partners, and makes recommendations for funding these projects. This is a supported process, with lots of input and ideas shared across the team as you shape your projects.

We build partnerships with a wide range of partners, from local communities, businesses, charities, the public sector and any other person or organisation that we think can have an impact on heath equity.

Our team come from a wide range of backgrounds. While making grants and investments is a big part of what we do, building partnerships is just as important. We’re building a big multidisciplinary team and we don’t expect applicants to be experienced in grant making to apply for our roles.

What we are looking for are dynamic, passionate people who want to build a career improving health equity. Some of our team specialise in community engagement, some come from commercial backgrounds, some from healthcare, some from entrepreneur support, among many other backgrounds. There are a wide range of skills that you could draw on to be a good fit for these roles.

The Roles

We are currently seeking Portfolio Managers to work on four areas of our work: our programmes focussed on childhood obesity, the health effects of air pollution, and multiple long-term conditions; and as part of our research and development team.

Our childhood obesity team

All children should have the opportunity to be healthy, no matter where they live. This includes access to a nutritious diet. Yet children’s chances of accessing healthy food – or being flooded with unhealthy food – depend strongly on where they grow up. As a result, children living in areas of lower average income are more likely to be both malnourished and obese. Our programme is working to change the food environments in places where children and families spend their time, so that eating well is the easiest – not hardest – thing to do.

Our health effects of air pollution team

Air pollution is more prevalent in urban areas. And poor air quality doesn’t impact people in these areas equally; some people are more susceptible to its harmful effects than others. And we know that it intersects with other systemic causes of ill health. Our programme partners with other organisations to build evidence on what works to reduce the health effects of air pollution equitably and influence change at local, borough, city, national and international levels.

Our multiple long-term conditions team

Our multiple long-term conditions programme aims to weaken the unfair link between precarious work, finances and housing and health. For Black people, single parents, people from Portuguese-speaking backgrounds, and a range of others, living on low income in our urban place too commonly results in ill health. Our programme wants to change that. We partner with

other organisations to deliver projects, conduct research and amplify our results with the aim of slowing people’s progression from one to many long-term conditions.

Our research and development team

Our research and development team manage our innovation programmes, a series of explorations around focus areas including: addressing structural inequities through funder practice; building strong local community partnerships; digital-first approaches to health; AI and inequalities; or Covid-19 vaccine knowledge.

Person specification

Responsibilities

Leading on strategy development for part of one of our urban health programmes

Building a deep understanding of one or more of our programmes and identifying organisations to collaborate with

Guiding and advising existing project partners as they deliver to achieve our mutual goals

Approaching relevant organisations and their teams, engaging them and codeveloping projects

Working with our evaluation team and external evaluation experts, develop evaluation plans for projects

Assisting organisational development of partners, through commissioning grants plus support

Driving an inclusive/non-extractive due diligence process

Bringing projects through our internal approval process

Building diverse, cross-sector partnerships

Collaborating with internal teams across the organisation, such as communications, evaluation and data to deliver and improve our programmes

Delivering thought leadership for your area of focus to influence relevant stakeholders, eg. blog writing, attending events.

Knowledge

An understanding of the foundation blocks for what makes organisations effective and work for people’s needs.

What you will bring

Strong relationship building skills, these may have been developed through coaching, building partnerships in different professional or personal contexts

Inclusive and quality communication skills, comfortable with a wide range of audiences

The ability to independently work in uncertainty on issues that are complex in nature and don’t have silver bullet solutions

A growth mindset where you look at problems and issues as opportunities to learn and are constantly seeking to help others to grow and overcome their challenges

A creative strategic thinker who can look at a complex problem and come up with solutions.

Values

Enterprising - looks at things from different angles, with willingness to experiment and test

Collaborative - gives time and attention to people and ideas, and motivates others

Delivery minded - is willing to get stuck in and takes ownership for results