Public health

Developed by Equinox service users with guidance from Equinox medical staff, the leaflets provide advice and guidance for dealing with extreme hot and cold weather.

The leaflets offer tailored information for people who use drugs, alcohol and experience mental ill health - so they can inform themselves about the essentials of self-care during extreme weather conditions.

This Equinox climate change project was funded by Defra. Research and development took place over 6 months in late 2012 and early 2013.

You can read more about Equinox's work on environmental sustainability in this online article for SDScene: http://sd.defra.gov.uk/2013/01/climate-harm-reduction-at-equinox/

This report presents what a network of public health registrars in the UK - chaired by Dr. James Smith and Dr. Stephen Dorey - have been doing to accelerate the shift to a more sustainable way of living and working.  It offers examples of work done to make both public health training and work more sustainable.

This report identifies three aspects of public health training where environmental sustainability could be incorporated in the short term:

travel, events and culture of training. Case studies are presented of actions being taken to understand and improve these. In the long-term it is likely that structures and processes of training will need to be redesigned to become sustainable and resilient.

Four areas of public health work are presented to illustrate how public health registrars are influencing a move to a more sustainable society:

• Local public health projects

• Teaching

• Research

• Specialist public health placements and projects

Many of the case studies relate to work public health registrars have led locally to increase environmental sustainability across a range of NHS organisations. This reflects the contexts within which most registrars have been working to date.

The work presented in this report is only a beginning. Collecting these case studies together has been done, not to look back, but to look forward and inspire future action.

Published late last year in BMJ Thorax, editorial by Ashley Woodcock: "The Montreal Protocol was signed 25 years ago. As a result, the irreversible destruction of the ozone layer was prevented. However, stratospheric ozone will not recover completely until 2060 and the consequent epidemic in skin cancer cases will persist until 2100. Many millions of patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have safely switched from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-powered metered-dose inhalers (MDIs) to either hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) or DPIs. China will be the last country to phase out CFCs by 2016. HFCs are global warming gases which will be controlled in the near future. HFCs in MDIs may be phased out over the next 10–20 years."

An interdisciplinary panel of Sustainable Healthcare Education members led a plenary session to open the NET Networking in Healthcare Education annual conference in Cambridge in September 2012. Slides from two of the speakers can now be downloaded here:

Diarmid CAMPBELL-LENDRUM (WHO) leads the climate change and health team within Public Health and Environment at WHO. He presented an update on the health effects of climate change internationally and the growing role of health professionals in adaptation and mitigation strategies. 

Annabel Bennett (NHS Sustainable Development Unit) gave an overview of the NHS SDU's world-leading work helping the NHS to fulfil its potential as an exemplary, sustainable and low carbon organisation. 

Other panel members were Stefi Barna (Public Health Lecturer, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia), Ben Whittaker (Occupational Therapy Sustainable Practice Network, Centre for Sustainable Healthcare) and Benny Goodman (Lecturer in Adult Nursing, Plymouth University).

The plenary was well received and the topic will become a regular feature of NET meetings.  Any health educators who would like to be present on their teaching are invited to apply for a joint interdisciplinary symposium for NET 2013.  More information is available in the call for abstracts. Please contact Benny Goodman or Ben Whittaker if you would like to be involved.