Campaign and Programme Lead: Health & Human Rights

Medact organises with the health community to win a world in which everyone can truly achieve and exercise their human right to health. We cover some of the most pressing national and global threats to health and wellbeing including institutional racism; climate change; human rights abuses; violent conflict; and rising inequality. We’re a member-led organisation, and our members are made up of a range of people who work in health including nurses, doctors, midwives, and clinical researchers.

We take an organising-centred approach to our work. We build community power by working in solidarity with health workers and the communities experiencing harm from the unjust systems we challenge. We run national campaigns, use research to expose injustice, and we support local organising groups across the country who lead most of our work.

About the role 

The Campaign and Programme Lead: Health & Human Rights leads Medact’s work coordinating the Patients Not Passports campaign, supporting health workers and migrant communities to bring an end to immigration checks and healthcare charging in the NHS. You will work in close partnership with the Access to Healthcare organiser at Migrants Organise, and with colleagues across Medact’s team.  

The role involves holding Medact’s key knowledge base on health and human rights issues. This can cover migration and health, immigration detention, data-sharing and artificial intelligence in public services, and civil liberties issues. You will  build relationships across the health community and wider human rights and migration spaces, from establishment institutions to frontline worker and grassroots groups. 

At Medact we have a management structure, but we organise ourselves to minimise the impact of hierarchy and make use of everyone’s skills and expertise—being part of our team means taking an active role in strategic decisions.

About you

This isn’t an entry-level role but you don’t need to have had a job in an NGO before or be a professional campaigner to be right for it. You might have worked with your local community to campaign on a social justice or health issue that you care about. Or, you might be a health worker who has seen the impact of these issues on your patients and wants to challenge the systems that drive inequality and marginalisation. You might have been impacted by the hostile environment yourself and want to take action to change it. 

You’ll have a strong understanding of power and how to work with others to create pressure for change. You need to be a great communicator, able to build trusting relationships with Medact members, academics, partner organisations and community groups. You’ll have an understanding of how digital communications compliment campaigning, an eye for a good media story and the know-how to get it out into the world.

Key dates

Closing date: Monday January 13th, 9am

Interviews: Tuesday January 28th

If needed, second interviews will be w/c 3rd February

Our recruitment principles

Medact aims to be an inclusive and supportive employer, and we recognise that recruitment processes don’t work for everyone. We acknowledge that people from certain backgrounds are under-represented in the NGO sector, and we’re committed to doing what we can to correct this. We welcome applications from people with marginalised identities or lived experience of the issues Medact works on. If you have any questions or uncertainties about this position, and whether you are right for it, please do get in touch!