Policy Officer for Leukaemia UK

Leukaemia UK – Our Charity

Leukaemia UK is growing! We are expanding our team to achieve a step-change in income, profile and impact in 2025 and beyond.

We are a ‘small but mighty’ charity with one big ambition: to stop leukaemia devastating lives. Over the next 10 years we want to help save and improve the lives of more people with leukaemia through finding and funding life-changing research and campaigning for change.

Despite progress in recent decades, someone in the UK is diagnosed with a blood cancer every 16 minutes and survival rates are among some of the worst of any cancer.  And the physical and psychological impact can be lifelong. 

Our current strategy outlines our plan to increase our investment into ground-breaking world class research and policy development focused on improving access to kinder, more effective diagnosis, treatment and care for leukaemia and other blood cancers. To do this, we are embarking on a period of significant growth, investing strategically to grow our income, profile, influence, and engagement and impact.

As we begin the fourth year of this ambitious 5-year strategy, we are seeking a talented, creative, and motivated Policy Officer to strengthen our policy development activity.

About the Policy Officer Role

We are looking for a self-motivated and experienced Policy Officer to take a leading role in Leukaemia UK’s health improvement and policy development that will effectively enable our policy influencing work and position Leukaemia UK as the leading charity to improve survival and quality of life of those affected by leukaemia.

The successful candidate will have a proven track record of developing evidence-based and solution focused policy positions that have resulted in policy change within the health and medical sector.

The role will be responsible for developing, expanding and maintaining Leukaemia UK’s knowledge base that will help us thoroughly understand of how diagnosis, treatment and care are delivered to people affected and how this translates to patient experience and clinical outcomes. Moreover, we want to understand the roles of the research and treatment landscapes in improving leukemia diagnosis, treatment and care.

This role will be essential in leading our evolving work on drug appraisals to ensure that innovative treatments are approved and become available for patients with leukaemia and blood cancers who can benefit from those treatments.

The successful candidate will be adept at using quantitative and qualitative research to gather intelligence, develop insights and turn them into evidence-based, solution-focused policy positions to drive our policy, health improvement, campaigning and public affairs programme. This includes gathering insights from desk-based research, patient groups, and health experts, as well as contributing our voice to drug appraisals to ensure patients benefit from the latest treatments. This role ensures that the 'patient voice' is heard, while also ensuring that the needs and priorities of individuals with leukaemia and other blood cancers are understood, represented and valued.

This role requires the ability to engage patient representatives and a wide range of stakeholders at different levels of seniority, such as healthcare professionals, researchers and policy/health improvement experts to understand what changes are needed across diagnosis, treatment and care of those with leukaemia and other blood cancers. A strong understanding of the health policy landscape, coupled with exceptional communication skills and a keen attention to detail, is essential.

Experience and skills

Essential

• Good experience of working in the health policy landscape
• Good experience in evidence-based policy development
• Good experience in undertaking evidence gathering exercises
• Proven experience of engaging and managing a range of external stakeholders and facilitating reference and advisory groups, including people with lived experience
• Proven experience of cross-team working
• Good time management skills, with an ability to organise own workload and respond reactively as required
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with an ability to disseminate complex information in a way that is easy to understand by a range of audiences
• Good ability to take on multiple activities and projects at the same time

Desirable​

• Project management skills
• Experience in drug appraisals

Knowledge and personal traits

Essential

• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience in health policy or health related area
• Knowledge of quantitative and qualitative methods to develop and analyse evidence
• An understanding of the importance of engaging with people with lived experience of leukaemia and related conditions; with a view to include their insight in our work
• A high level of accuracy and attention to detail
• An understanding of health inequalities and the importance of engaging with marginalised groups
• A strong commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion

Desirable

• Knowledge of the health system and/or health policy across the UK

Role specifics  

• Hours: Full time hours are 37.5 Monday to Friday
• Location: Our hybrid working policy is a minimum of two days per month in our London Office. For the Research & Advocacy team this will vary dependent on meetings with internal and external stakeholders so your flexibility is a must. Our aim as a team is to work together in the office together if and when possible.
• Salary range £34,000 - £38,000 (FTE)  depending on experience
• We are proud of our benefits – see a summary on our website Work with us - Leukaemia UK 

Applications

If you feel you have the passion for our work and the right mix of skills, energy, and flair to embrace this broad and challenging role and enable our strategy to fly, then we would love you to apply.

Please also see the full job description attached to the advert. To minimise unconscious bias, we use anonymous recruitment and are unable to consider direct applications. Please apply via the CharityJob website with your CV and covering letter by 9am Monday 17th March 2025.

• First interviews will be held face to face in our London Offices – at 26 Great Queen St, London WC2B 5BL on Monday 24th March 2025. 
• Second interviews will be via Teams on Monday 31st March 2025. 
• For those shortlisted for interview we will share our interview questions and any task with you in advance.

I look forward to hearing from you!  

Georgia Papacleovoulou

Head of Policy & Advocacy

Leukaemia UK