Public Health Officer - Oral Health

About the role

Public Health North Northamptonshire are looking to appoint a Public Health Officer to the Public Health Children’s and Young People’s Team to work on the coordination of oral health improvement. You will have dental experience and use this to play a key part in improving the health of residents in North Northamptonshire, through prevention, early intervention and health improvement approaches across the health and social care economy. You will also support the implementation of evidence based public health programmes/interventions to improve health and reduce health inequalities in relation to oral health.

We are looking for a passionate individual who is experienced in, public health, dentistry, health, or social care to work across North Northamptonshire and has a good working knowledge of the National oral health agenda. The successful candidate will have excellent communication skills to work collaboratively with key stakeholders across a network of settings, within these relationships you need to represent the values of the team, you will need to have effective interpersonal and influencing skills, be able to build relationships and influence stakeholders at all levels.

As a Public Health Officer, you will play a key role in identifying effective evidence-based interventions and reviewing practice to improve oral health outcomes for our communities, whilst reducing health inequalities. This role will focus on developing partnerships with health system partners and providing officer support to the commissioned work within children, young people’s and adult services. You will be expected to travel to various locations across the county. You will work with colleagues from dental practice, local authorities, social care, education, NHS and voluntary sector organisations.

You will report to the Public Health Practitioner for Maternity, Children and Young People and will work across the Children’s Portfolio to support the team and organisation in achieving the desired outcomes.

This is a fixed term appointment for a 12-month period on a part-time basis of 22.2 hours per week.

Your application should be structured on the essential and desirable criteria in the job description.

The closing date for this post is Tuesday 6th January 2026, although we may close early if we receive a higher-than-expected number of applications.

In-person interviews are expected to be held during the w/c 19th January 2026.

If you have any further questions about this role, please contact Patsy Richards, Public Health Principal, at Patsy.Richards@northnorthants.gov.uk.

What will you be doing?

1. Manage key pieces of public health development work, in line with local and national priorities and emerging legislation, to meet Public Health and Wellbeing Service Plans and national and local public health strategy.
2. Provide expertise to the Public Health team and be accountable for the planning, co-ordination, facilitation and monitoring of public health change or improvement projects; developing capability and capacity to embed service improvement tools and techniques, supporting the continuous modernisation and redesign of traditional service.
3. Identify opportunities to improve and/or simplify public health related processes and seek to remedy these through improved processes, compliance or coaching.
4. Contribute to or lead project planning within specific public health priority areas, ensuring that a clear and transparent plan is maintained, managed and progress tracked appropriately, in order to maintain control of delivering improved services using cost effective processes.
5. Represent Public Health at the Health and Wellbeing Forum within Northamptonshire and identify opportunities to work with partners to improve and embed consideration of health and wellbeing in policies and procedures.
6. Support health improvement initiatives through engaging clinicians, commissioners and local authority providers in new initiatives to change behaviour, increasing public awareness of risk factors and health promotion.
7. Support health protection planning and the local public health response to major incidents, disease outbreaks or other public health incidents.
8. Monitor changing guidance at a national and regional level, bring attention to the public health areas it will impact and tailor the public health programme according to the population need with the aim of reducing health inequalities.

The above is only an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and outcomes required of the role. You will carry out any other duties as may reasonably be required by your line manager. The job description and person specification may be reviewed on an ongoing basis in accordance with the changing needs of the organisation or the Public Health Directorate.

About you

Education, Qualifications and Training

Essential Criteria

• Educated to degree level in a management-related discipline or hold a professional qualification (such as finance or procurement) at a similar level

Desirable Criteria

• A formal qualification in or working towards a Public Health or related discipline
• Prince2 Practitioner Level or Equivalent

Experience and Knowledge

Essential Criteria

• Able to demonstrate a good understanding of NHS and local authority policy, statutory duties and responsibilities.
• Able to demonstrate understanding of public health areas of responsibility and functions.
• Able to demonstrate understanding of public health practice, health promotion and health care evaluation.
• Able to demonstrate knowledge of evidence based public health practice.

Desirable Criteria

• Able to demonstrate relevant dentistry knowledge

Ability and Skills

Essential Criteria

• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills (for a range of audiences from senior management to the media).
• Sensible negotiator with practical expectation of what can be achieved
• Excellent interpersonal and motivational skills with the ability to influence and negotiate.
• Ability for presenting complex information to groups and in a simplified way
• Computer literate.

Desirable Criteria

• The ability to manage and/or work on a number of concurrent projects.
• Able to act independently, with some guidance from line manager.

Equal Opportunities

Ability to demonstrate awareness/understanding of equal opportunities and other people’s behaviour, physical, social and welfare needs.

Additional Factors

Essential Criteria

• Able to demonstrate experience of working in NHS or local government cultures and structures.
• Experience of working with health and/ or social care professionals to deliver service improvement.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of full cycle experience of managing projects and leading task and finish groups.

Our Benefits

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people.

You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think!

Why choose us?

We offer a vibrant working environment with:

• a competitive salary
• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• lots of opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

About us

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are:

Customer-focused
Respectful
Efficient
Supportive
Trustworthy

Our key commitments help ensure that the priorities we make, now and in the future, maintain the necessary breadth of focus in those areas that we believe matter most.

Disability Confident Employer

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and is committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role.

Our Employment and Disability Service provides bespoke support to individuals facing barriers to employment, helping them work towards their goals to start, stay and succeed in employment. For further information please click here The Employment and Disability Service (EADS) | North Northamptonshire Council

Armed Forces Community

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).

Further information can be found at Jobs and careers | North Northamptonshire Council (northnorthants.gov.uk)