Covid-19: The Global Environmental Health Experience

This book is devoted to the efforts of Environmental Health Practitioners (EHPs), their employers and supportive professional bodies world-wide in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Drawing upon the first-hand experiences and reflections of EHPs working across the professional discipline in countries around the world, the book highlights how they responded to the initial wave of SARS-CoV-2 infection as it spread globally. It explores how this impacted on their environmental health work as their wider public health skills and expertise were increasingly called upon/ The book recognises the significant contributions that EHPs have made to protect lives and livelihoods since the seriousness of COVID-19 became apparent. It also identifies shortcomings in the response and deployment of personnel and makes a series of recommendations to inform future practice.

This book:

• Captures a moment in history through the experiences of Environmental Health Practitioners in meeting the complex challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Features the observations of front line practitioners on the practical challenges and opportunities encountered globally, suggesting the lessons learnt for current practice in infectious disease prevention and control.
• Expands upon the reflections of some of the professional bodies around the world as to how the response of EHPs to the COVID-19 pandemic should result in a renewed commitment to public health through Environmental Health.

EHPs in current practice and in training, other public health professionals and those looking to build better health protection services, now, and in the future, will find this book a valuable resource to inform the case for the key role of Environmental Health in the current pandemic, in response to future challenges and crises, and in managing risks to health encountered in more usual times.

Dr Chris Day has worked in local government since 1975, providing consultancy services and training in industry, and lecturing for 17 years on the BSc Environmental Health course at King's College London, where he latterly led the MSc programme. His Doctorate in Public Health was obtained from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where his thesis focused on the surveillance of food-borne illness. In 2010 Chris joined the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health where he was responsible for developing the 2011 Curriculum and professional training portfolio and edited the Journal of Environmental Health Research. He has been involved in several funded research projects over the years and contributed chapters to Clay's Handbook of Environmental Health. Although now semi-retired, Chris is still undertaking consultancy work.