Principal Epidemiologist

Principal Epidemiologist

Salary: £59,678 - £62,286 per annum

Job ref: 919-CG-1334851-EXT

COVID-19 has reinforced the impact that threats to health can have on society and the economy and driven health security as a critical component of our national security architecture. The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a system leader for health security; taking action internationally to strengthen global health security, providing trusted advice to government and the public and reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by infectious disease, environmental hazards, and other threats to health.

UKHSA’s remit, as an agency with a global-to-local reach, is to protect the health of the nation from infectious diseases and other external threats to health. As the nation’s expert national health security agency UKHSA will:

Prevent: anticipate threats to health and help build the nation’s readiness, defences and health security

Detect: use cutting edge environmental and biological surveillance to proactively detect and monitor infectious diseases and threats to health

Analyse: use world-class science and data analytics to assess and continually monitor threats to health, identifying how best to control and mitigate the risks

Respond: take rapid, collaborative and effective actions nationally and locally to mitigate threats to health when they materialise

Lead: lead strong and sustainable global, national, regional and local partnerships designed to save lives, protect the nation from public health threats, and reduce inequalities

UKHSA’s immediate and most important priority is to continue the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the longer term, UKHSA will build on the legacy of the COVID-19 response to ensure resilient and scalable infrastructure to secure the UK in the strongest position to protect the public from future threats to health.

Job overview

The HCAI & AMR Division brings together teams responsible for a range of surveillance programmes, epidemiological investigations, incident/outbreak response, advice to Government and the UKHSA Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Priority Programme. As a Principal Epidemiologist, you will work within the Healthcare-Associated Infection & Antimicrobial Resistance (HCAI & AMR) Surveillance Team.

You will be a senior member of the scientific staff, leading a number of multi-disciplinary epidemiology and surveillance programmes in a field that is high-profile and attracts much media interest.  The successful candidate will lead and  manage multidisciplinary teams of nursing, scientific and data analytic staff maintaining existing surveillance systems  and identifying, designing and developing new surveillance systems alongside software developers.

Main duties of the job

Lead teams within the HCAI & AMR Division’s Gram-positive Section delivering on national surveillance of streptococcal and staphylococcal infection, and provide senior epidemiological input for other functions within the Section, including support for outbreak response.

Provide national expertise on the epidemiology of HCAIs.

Provide epidemiological leadership to international networks, with particular focus on methodological aspects affecting future data analysis.

Identify key public health questions of importance to this Section. Lead on addressing these through the development of existing surveillance systems and/or through development research proposals.

Direct the digital development of existing surveillance systems to improve interoperability with external health datasets and provide enriched data flows as means of reducing data collection burden and improving monitoring of risk factors and clinical endpoints.

Provide strategic direction to data linkage projects, negotiate and renew data sharing agreements with relevant bodies, develop and ratify collaborative agreements.

Closing date: 4 October 2022.

https://www.healthjobsuk.com/job/v4555013