Co-Design Lead - Bradford Health Inequities Programme (Bhip)

About you

You will be an experienced, community-focused practitioner with a strong background in co-design, participation, community research or related approaches, and experience of working directly with Global Majority communities and people from different faiths, cultures and backgrounds.

You will be a skilled facilitator and listener, able to build trust, work sensitively with lived experience and use creative, culturally grounded approaches to involve people meaningfully.

You will be curious, practical and adaptable, confident working collaboratively while also taking the lead on developing and delivering Bhip’s co-design approach.

The Opportunity

This is an exciting and unique opportunity to help shape and lead an ambitious approach to community co-design within HHU and the Bhip Programme, working alongside Global Majority communities experiencing some of Bradford’s greatest health inequities.

You will work directly with people and communities to explore their experiences of clinical and community-based health and care, including where racism, discrimination and structural barriers affect access, experience and outcomes. Using co-design, participatory research, deep listening, storytelling and creative approaches, you will explore what matters, what gets in the way and what communities tell us needs to change.

A key part of the role will be developing culturally grounded and accessible ways of working, recognising that conventional consultation and research methods do not work equally well for everyone. You will have the freedom to test and develop different approaches with communities, including creative, visual, narrative and participatory methods, and share what we learn locally and through Bhip’s wider national lottery collective network.

You will lead the development of Bhip’s co-design methodology while remaining a hands-on practitioner. Working closely with the HHU Programme Manager, Bhip Programme Lead, Insight & Evaluation Lead and Community Engagement Facilitators, you will help connect community participation, research and lived experience to Bhip’s Story-to-System approach, ensuring that what communities tell us can contribute to practical learning, action and change.

You will also help build the confidence and capacity of the wider Bhip team to work in genuinely co-designed ways and, where people want to become more involved, support community members and lived-experience leaders to develop as co-designers, peer/community researchers or Story Stewards.

The role will evolve as Bhip develops. We do not expect every method or area of work to be predetermined. We are looking for someone with the experience, curiosity and judgement to work alongside communities, test ideas, learn from what works and help us develop approaches that are meaningful in Bradford and potentially useful much more widely.