Outreach Officer

Role Overview

The Outreach Officer plays a vital role within the Pan Human Biobank, combining active participant involvement with direct management of biological specimen lifecycles. This position ensures the ethical and culturally sensitive recruitment of participants while meticulously overseeing specimen receipt, processing, storage, and tracking according to biobank standards.

Collaboration with hospital pre-processing areas, laboratory reception, logistics, quality assurance, and clinical teams is essential to uphold biosafety, data accuracy, and strict regulatory compliance. The officer contributes significantly to advancing high-standard biomedical research.

This role may involve supporting specialized biobank collections, such as cord blood and maternal or neonatal samples. It requires consistent attendance during standard office hours with flexibility for after-hours work, weekend duties, on-call responsibilities, and travel to recruitment or collection locations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead ethical and culturally appropriate recruitment of participants, conducting eligibility assessments, obtaining informed consent, and providing continuous participant support compliant with regulatory and ethical protocols.
• Foster and maintain productive relationships with participants, healthcare professionals, institutions, and other external partners to enhance biobank outreach and engagement.
• Organize and execute outreach, education, and awareness initiatives including sessions, workshops, community campaigns, and representation at external events.
• Accurately maintain recruitment, training, and participant documentation within Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) or equivalent platforms, safeguarding data integrity and confidentiality.
• Coordinate training and engagement activities by managing materials, logistics, scheduling, and monitoring their effectiveness.
• Receive and validate biological samples from collection sites, guaranteeing proper labeling, documentation, chain-of-custody, and alignment with LIMS entries.
• Carry out specimen pre-analytical and processing tasks adhering to standard operating procedures, biosafety protocols, specimen stability, and cold-chain management.
• Contribute to quality control, inventory oversight, compliance measures, incident reporting, corrective actions, audits, and ensuring consistent adherence to ISO and other biobank regulatory requirements.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences, Public Health, Nursing, Healthcare Management, or a related discipline.
• At least one year of professional experience involving healthcare-related community engagement, participant recruitment, clinical research, or working within biobanking or research environments.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal abilities enabling respectful and professional interaction with diverse populations.
• Comprehensive understanding of participant confidentiality, data protection principles, ethical research standards, and informed consent procedures.
• Familiarity with laboratory operations including biosafety, infection control, biological specimen handling, and proper use of personal protective equipment.
• Strong organizational capabilities, document management, and ability to strictly follow SOPs, manuals, and regulatory frameworks.
• Proficiency with English language, computer literacy particularly MS Office, and ideally familiarity with LIMS or related management systems.
• Additional assets include Arabic fluency, experience in presenting or facilitating educational sessions, laboratory skills, equipment maintenance knowledge, advanced research or ethics training, and licensure from health authorities such as DOH or DHA.