Job Description and Person Specification
Level 8c Career Framework
Job Title:
Head of Public Health Information Directorate
Location:
Reports to:
Department/Division:
Job Reference:
Job Purpose
As the Head of Public Health Intelligence you will be responsible for planning,
managing and leading the operational and strategic development of the directorate and
its performance. This will include strong liaison and interaction within the
organisation, local strategic partnerships and other key stakeholders to maximise
health improvement and reduce inequalities.
Job Dimensions
The post holder will:
 Lead and manage a team of public health information
analysts/specialists/statisticians
 Manage the development and commissioning of public health science
needs assessment, research and other outputs
 Develop and lead implementation of information systems that will
maximise delivery of public health information
 Undertake and oversee highly complex statistical and epidemiological
analysis of datasets, comparative statistics and trends over time
 Lead, plan and manage complex projects at a local level and may input
into or lead at a regional and national level on identified projects.
 Develops strategic plans for the public health information directorate in
line with service objectives and contributes to the formulation of strategic
plans for the service
 Provide expert statistical and epidemiological advice
 Provide specialist public health input into public health teams and working
groups across the local health community and networks
 Guide and advise others in their decision making processes based on sound
public health knowledge and evidence
 Present complex statistical information to a variety of audiences which
will include both those with and without an understanding of statistical
techniques
 Operate as part of the Senior Management Team
 Leading on the development of public health capacity and raising
awareness of the contribution of public health skills and knowledge in the
local health communities, including the local authority and the voluntary
sector.
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Budgetary management
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Organisation Chart
Key Result Areas for this post
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Core Duties and Responsibilities
1. Communication and relationship
 Excellent communications skills, both organ and written, are required to
receive and analyse highly complex statistical information, sometimes in a
consulting roll resulting in the need to have highly level persuasive,
motivational and negotiating skills
 An ability to present highly complex and sensitive information to other
statistical specialists and non-specialist audiences and individuals
 Presentations conveying complex statistical data and other health care
information will be made to a variety of audiences in both terms of knowledge
and size but some may be to large groups of 20 or more.
 Communicate with and establish and maintain relationships with other
members of the Public Health Team, a range of other groups or individuals
seeking help, advice or information on epidemiology, statistics, statistical
methods research, or survey or questionnaire design related to public health.
 Write and contribute to reports. These reports will vary in length and
complexity, and will range from informal summaries to detailed
comprehensive reports. It will also be necessary for the post holder to be able
to summarise these reports and disseminate their findings. Some reports will
require complex statistical analyses or contain contradictory findings, and it
will be necessary to be able to explain such analyses and finding to specialist
and non-specialist audiences in a way that they can understand the
implications of the report.
 The post holder will act as a consultant so this will involve an element of
teaching and training, as well as providing advice.
 Respond when required to press enquiries and general public concerns.
2. Knowledge, Training and Experience
Through master’s level qualifications or equivalent qualifications and experience:
 Develop highly specialist in depth knowledge, across epidemiology and
statistics required that will enable the post holder to provide timely solutions
to a range of complex analytical and methodological issues projects and
queries
 Have knowledge to design and manage systems to input, store and disseminate
public health statistical and epidemiological information. This requires the
post holder to set up systems to integrate and link diverse multi-agency data
sets and routinely collected health related data sets
 Knowledge to manage the development and production of the Director of
Public Health’s Annual Report. This requires highly developed interpretation
and report writing skills and the ability to explain complex information in
simple terms
 Well grounded experience of undertaking surveys, statistical analyses, and
dissemination of findings with the ability to communicate complex
information to specialists and non-specialists
 Knowledge to undertake evaluations using statistical and epidemiological
methods to effectively measure the outcome and benefit of individual public
health initiatives
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Knowledge to develop and deliver training programmes in public health
information
Detailed knowledge of various statistical software packages as well as
database and spreadsheets, and have the knowledge and experience to
undertake complex and intensive data management and data manipulation.
3. Analytical and Judgemental Skills
 As well as high-level technical skills, a range of complex analytical skills are
needed to appropriately identify and respond correctly to complex
epidemiological issues.
 Lead on and resolve highly complex facts or situations which will require
analysis, interpretation and expert judgement to find the most appropriate
solutions despite conflicting opinions.
 Information that is required for analysis and comparison will not always be
available in the format required so judgemental skills will be necessary to
derive alternative information sources and methods of analysis, and balance
the likelihood of different assumptions relating to this information, in order to
obtain an adequate solution.
 In some cases results may be conflicting, it is necessary to perform sensitivity
analyses which involve undertaking numerous different analyses to test and
assess various assumptions in order to make judgements about the most
appropriate analyses and results in relation to the nature of the situation and
the assumptions being made.
 Provide expert advice on clinical indicators, which may have a major impact
on the provision of services and quality of care.
 Make decisions on areas where no previous work has been undertaken and
determine the inclusion of new areas of work to meet local strategies and
policies.
 Analyses may involve sensitive information so the post-holder needs to ensure
that the analyses are completed carefully and correctly. This involves detailed
checking and examination of the analyses produced.
4. Planning and Organisational Skills
 Contribute to the planning and formulation of organisational (local and
regional) strategies based on sound statistical and epidemiological
information, revisiting current strategies where necessary should the evidencebase change
 Formulate and prepare long-term strategic plans which involve uncertainty
and which impact across the whole organisation and beyond. This will
involve the development, implementation and evaluation of long term plans
and strategies, within the aims and policies of the Public Health Directorate
which impact on a range of community agencies and strategic partnerships.
 To initiate and develop a rolling annual work programme for the Public Health
Intelligence Unit, to support national, regional and local policies and strategies
in both the short-term, long-term and strategic planning cycles, determining
priorities.
 Interpret and implement national policy on health improvement locally,
planning and organising strategy interventions to improve health.
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To design and manage systems to input, store and disseminate public health
statistical and epidemiological information; setting up systems to integrate and
link multiple data sets.
Lead on a number of projects at the same time, and it will be necessary for the
post holder to plan and organise their own time according to deadlines
High level project management skills are an essential within this post.
5. Physical Skills
 A knowledge of analytical databases and their abilities is required.
 The post requires highly developed skills, where accuracy and continuous
quality assurance is important in order to manipulate data and ensure the
delivery of complex data for critical planning and policy decisions (requires
an example)
 High levels of concentration are required.
6. Responsibility for patient/client care
 There will be no clinical contacts, all contacts will be incidental.
7. Responsibility for Policy/Service Development
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Determine information policy objectives and standards that impact on a
regional/national basis across a number of NHS organisations and NHS
partners.
Interpret national policy to address organisational objectives, ensuring a multidisciplinary and partnership approach to deliver key outcomes.
Have a key role on advising on the development of, or the reviewing of
existing treatment programmes, in order to support commissioners to develop
cost-effective plans for the provision of healthcare.
Lead performance monitoring arrangements to ensure that the Public Health
Directorate is able to deliver on the performance targets for which the
Directorate has responsibility.
Responsible for formulating health improvement recommendations to various
decision making committees/fora, including PCT PEC/Boards, LSP subboards, local policy groups etc
Instigate and direct the development of new information systems, such as webbased analytical databases, including developing and managing appropriate
external partnerships
Develop and maximise the use of geographical information systems, ensuring
that mapped data are available and effectively utilised within the organisation
Write and contribute to reports which will be used by others in the
development of policies and services to meet the organisation’s priorities,
leading on behalf of information and intelligence.
Identify, propose and implement changes to working practices to improve the
quality of information delivery in own and beyond own area
Have a high level of understanding of how to work, store and transmit data in
accordance with data protection, freedom of information systems and
confidentiality principles.
Needs examples
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8. Responsibility for Financial & Physical Resource
 The post holder will be a budget holder with responsibility for budget setting
in respect of Public Health Programmes. This will include securing, coordinating and managing public health budgets and monitoring expenditure.
 Budget holder for individual national or regional public health information
projects.
 Set and monitor department budget.
9. Responsibility for Human Resources
 Responsible as line manager for the Public Health Directorate.
 Leadership and management of staff in order to achieve organisational
objectives and ensure career development of all staff.
 Manage the Information training function across the organisation and take a
key role in national training initiatives
 Responsible for staff development through either 1:1 training or supporting
training/continuous professional development sessions within the organisation
 Supervise students or newer colleagues offering advice and training where
required particularly around research, surveys, audits etc.
10. Responsibility for Information Resources
 Responsible for the management and development of information systems
across the organisation. Adapting and designing information systems to meet
the specifications of the organisation.
 Propose changes to and redesign of statistical and epidemiological information
in terms of new data collection for service and policy changes. Develop new
data sets where required.
 Identify gaps in public health information and work with multi agency teams
to agree and develop appropriate new innovative ways of collecting data and
raising awareness of the need and importance of statistics and epidemiology to
connect public health information to organisational practice.
 Lead, plan, manage, review and develop the Public Health information
function to ensure that its work is accurate, timely and relevant to the work of
the organisation.
 Lead on the dissemination of statistics and information to all stakeholders in
strategic fora to enable the provision of services through robust health needs
assessments, joint strategic needs assessments, health equity audits etc.
 Review complex research proposals as the expert statistical advisor to the
Local Research Ethics Committee.
 Work with colleagues in the public health observatories and in local networks
to share and develop resources, knowledge and skills in order to improve the
efficiency, effectiveness and accessibility of information and intelligence.
It is difficult to improve the wording of the above section to ensure level 6 is
achieved unless clear examples of different information systems can be given that
impact across the organisation.
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11. Responsibility for Research and Development
 Provide consulting advice on a range of epidemiological and statistical issues
relating to the design, conduct, analysis and dissemination of surveys and
research projects
 Take responsibility for statistical aspects of a research project as a names
author, where appropriate
 Undertakes surveys, audits or research to support service development e.g.
lifestyle surveys
 Develop new methodologies for the analysis and/or interpretation of data.
 Contribute significantly, when required, to the statistical aspects of articles for
submission to peer-reviewed publications
12. Freedom to Act
 Interpret, translate and implement national health service policy in order to
establish goals and standards at a local level, the post holder may be required
to input into regional and national health service policy.
 Have freedom to initiate actions and take decisions as well as advising the
Chief Executive and Organisational Directors on information and intelligence
so that the organisation is able to achieve its corporate objectives.
 Managing work so that deadlines are met and work achieved to the highest
standard
13. Physical Effort
 Combination of sitting, standing and walking
 Desk based with high levels of concentration but also required to attend
meetings throughout the working week.
14. Mental Effort
 Requires frequent high level and prolonged concentration on tasks with tight
deadlines, for example, conducting statistical analyses, performing
transformation and calculations on a variety of large and intricate datasets.
 Regularly considers several sources of information and intelligence at one
time to inform decision making.
 There are frequent unpredictable requests to deal with staffing issues and to
deal with immediate requests from executive staff for support or urgent
requests for information.
15. Emotional Effort
 There will be a requirement to deal with staff appraisal, staff performance and
where required disciplinary issues.
 May deal with distressing or emotional circumstances in relation to certain
data sets e.g. infant mortality.
 May have to resolve and handle conflict within the team, within the Senior
Management Team and with other colleagues (internal and external),
particularly around interpretation of intelligence, corporate objectives,
deadlines and work specifications.
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16. Working Conditions
 The post is mainly office bound, using the computer for most of the day,
collecting, collating, analysing and reporting on data.
 Exposure to unpleasant conditions is rare.
This job description is not meant to be exhaustive. It describes the main duties and
responsibilities of the post. It may be subject to change in light of developing
organisational and service needs and wherever possible change will follow
consultation with the post holder.
Overall feedback conclusion:
In order to achieve an 8c outcome all or most of the higher levels of the profile
ranges will need to be achieved ( i.e. for Planning, Physical Skills, Policy,
Finance, HR and IR. This may be very difficult. I wonder if you have any
examples of such posts with this outcome? The top of the points range for the
profile is 659, the band boundary is 630. this means that only two factors
amongst the group mentioned above (other than planning which has to stay at
level 5) can come down from the top levels (i.e. Finance or Physical Skills or HR
or IR ) to remain as an 8c outcome. This assumes that the other factors have the
same outcomes as the profile.
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Attributes
Qualifications
Essential
Developed Specialist knowledge and experience of
statistical techniques and procedures, acquired through
degree level and
Criteria
Test
A
Desirable
EDCL qualification
Desirable
ranking
criteria
A
A/I/T
Knowledge
Experience
Higher degree, and/or qualification, and significant
experience related to health information to Master’s level.
Knowledge of current public health policy
A/I
Fluent in electronically accessing and using complex health
related data
A/I/T
Knowledge of STAT/SPSS/SAS or other specialist statistical
software
A/I/T
Knowledge of GIS systems and outputs
A/I
Knowledge of the theories of project management
A/I/T
Extensive working knowledge of MS Office – Excel, Access,
Word & PowerPoint
A/I
Knowledge of data security and confidentiality issues
Five of more years at a senior level in public health
information
A/I
A/I
Report writing and presentation skills
A/I
Significant experience of working with multiple sets of health
related data and information systems in health related
organisations
A/I
Experience of system development and query and report
A/I
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writing
Experience in the use of statistical and epidemiological
methodologies for interpreting and understanding data sets
Experience in the development of systems for the inputting,
storing and dissemination of information
A/I
Practical experience in managing and facilitating change
Experience in the training and development of others in
information skills
A/I
Experience of dealing with external stakeholders including
the Local Authority
Disposition,
Skills and
Abilities
A/I
A/I
A/I
Scientific publications, presentation of papers at
conferences, seminars etc
Excellent leadership and management skills
A/I
Excellent communications skills - written and verbal
A/I/T
Ability to develop and deliver complex
statistical/epidemiological presentations to large audiences
A/I/T
Sensible negotiator with practical experience of what can be
achieved
A/I
Conscientious and proven team worker with the ability to
engage with people at all levels
A/I/T
Ability to work independently as well as a member of a team
as a self manager with high levels of motivation and a
flexible approach to work.
A/I/T
Highly numerate with skills and experience of the analysis
and interpretation of data
A/I/T
A/I
Experience of analysing and interpreting health,
healthcare or demographic data or local
authority work
A/I
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Criteria Test:
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with
experience in disseminating information via written reports
and presentations to a wide range of audiences in terms of
both size and composition
A/I/T
Experience project based working
A/I
Organisational Skills, ability to prioritise workloads within
timescales and meet deadlines.
A/I
Budget Management Skills
A/I
A = Application Form
I = Interview
T = Test
P = Presentation
R = Refererences
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