Years ago when I left paediatrics to train in public health medicine, quite a few clinical colleagues thought it was a retrograde step. Public Health is seen by some as a backwater for failed doctors. Public Health was not sexy.
1/...

Cardiology is sexy. Surgery is sexy. Patients can die from heart attacks & ruptured guts but modern specialist medicine treats & saves lives. Public health? Waste of time some say. Not surprising that Public Health struggles for influence over the specialties or resourcing.
2/..

But, if anything COVID19 has shown, is that populations die from public health threats. If ICUs, hospitals, clinics are full it’s because public health measures have failed. Medicine treats the effects of disease, public health addresses the root causes.
3/...

Public health failure is not due to lack of effort or skill or expertise of the PH workforce but reflects state of the specialty. PH has been grossly underfunded & under-resourced for years, & more cuts in public health funding are in the pipeline. This has consequences.
4/...

We have a decent health protection system but it could have been stronger had we invested in it more. The HP teams kept Covid19 at bay for a month, delaying the epidemic. The economic costs of a month of lockdown FAR EXCEED the miniscule investments in health protection.
5/...

Because of COVID19, public health is in the spotlight. When this is all over, PH may be quickly forgotten.
Just remember, deaths each year nationally:
77 800 smoking related
40 000 obesity related
7 551 due to alcohol
6 507 suicides
Public health threats kill populations

Primary Care is a key partner for Public Health. Real game changing power of primary care is thru what we do re:prevention, health promotion & local coordination of health & social care, & not the minor ailments that currently make up a lot of our workload.