We are looking for an Ethics Manager to work collaboratively with Our Future Health teams. You'll be working across our three core workstreams of Participant Recruitment, Researcher and Data Platforms & Feedback, Engagement and Recontact with a remit to ensure that Ethics is embedded throughout the programme. We are moving at pace, often encountering questions and problems that are the first of their kind at this scale. You'll be passionate about Ethics, with a considered and pragmatic approach to your work.
Our Future Health is the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to detect, prevent and treat diseases. We are a charity, supported by the UK Government, in partnership with charities and industry. We work closely with the NHS and with public authorities across all nations and regions of the UK.
Our plan is to bring together 5 million volunteers from right across the UK who will be asked to contribute information to help build one of the most detailed pictures we have ever had of people’s health. Researchers will be able to use this information to make new discoveries about human health and diseases. So future generations can live in good health for longer.
What you’ll be doing
You'll be working collaboratively with Our Future Health teams, including product and design teams, communications, study support, behavioural science, user experience, programme operations and the clinical team, alongside colleagues in the Ethics, Compliance and Governance team (including access, regulatory, and data protection teams). You will Provide responsive ethics support and advice across our programme’s three core workstreams:
- Participant Recruitment workstream, supporting the development of participant-facing materials to ensure that they reflect our approved research protocol.
- Researcher and Data Platforms workstream, providing support for the drafting, and development, of policies linked to participants’ data and researchers’ use of their data.
- Feedback, Engagement, and Recontact workstream, advising on how participants should be invited to consent to receive health feedback in the future.
Day to day responsibilities include:
- Undertaking audits and analyses of our governance documents, policies, and standard operating procedures to ensure that they remain up-to-date and fit for purpose from an ethics perspective.
- Responding in an informed and clear way to internal and external ethics queries.
- Contributing to the delivery of in-house ethics training opportunities to Our Future Health staff members.
- Providing guidance on the interpretation and implementation of our research protocol and our Ethics and Governance Framework to ensure they are applied consistently across Our Future Health’s teams.
- Drafting and developing policies that require the Ethics Team’s contributions.
- Contributing to regular reporting requirements – e.g., to our funders, or other partners.
- Offering support to Our Future Health teams through contributing to the Ethics Team’s weekly ‘Ethics Surgery’.
- Liaising with our Ethics Advisory Board on issues that require its guidance and support.
- Keeping abreast of policy developments that could be relevant to the embedding of ethics in our research programme.
- Helping Our Future Health demonstrate values of transparency, accountability, trustworthiness, and clarity.
- Advocating for, and promoting, the role of ethics across Our Future Health.
To succeed, you will have some of the following skills and experience:
- Knowledge of research ethics, data ethics, or bioethics.
- Familiarity with the health research ethics and regulatory landscapes.
- Experience of supporting the development of health research, or health research allied policies.
- Strong knowledge of emerging ethical challenges in longitudinal healthcare research programmes.
- Excellent attention to detail, particularly with respect to identifying ethical issues that could arise through particular actions, communications, or policies.
- Experience designing and managing processes and developing standard operating procedures.
- Ability to work collaboratively in a complex organisation.
- Ability to adapt and take initiative in a fast-paced organisation that is developing rapidly.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, confidence, and diplomacy in dealing with complex stakeholder relationships.
- Exceptional organisational and time-management skills, with a keen attention to detail and an ability to multitask.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and an ability to adapt to using other software.
- £50,000 - £56,000 per annum
- Generous company pension package with employer contributions of up to 12%
- 30 days annual leave (plus bank holidays.)
- Continuous career development with regular appraisals and learning and development opportunities.
- A lovely new office in Holborn, Central London – we offer flexible and remote working arrangements.
Join us - let’s prevent disease together.
Application deadline - Wednesday the 8th of January 2025.
What We Do
Our Future Health is the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases.
Our mission is to create an incredibly detailed picture of the UK population’s health, by recruiting up to five million adult volunteers from across the UK. Each volunteer will be asked to fill out a questionnaire and provide a blood sample that can be linked to their health records. Taken together, the data will present health researchers with a powerful tool to identify new ways of tackling diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and dementia.
It's an unprecedented challenge that involves answering questions that have never been asked before – ethical, practical, and technological. And by getting these answers right, we believe Our Future Health will allow future generations to live in good health for longer.
We are currently expanding our team and looking for specialists across various fields – people who are motivated by the opportunity of creating something new that will make a difference to society. Click on the Jobs tab above to start exploring our current opportunities.
Our Future Health is a registered charity in England, Wales and Scotland.
