Better Health For All

By Grace Norman, Specialty Registrar in Public Health  

In August 2017, I saw an email looking for public health registrars to work on one of two policy campaigns with the Faculty of Public Health (FPH): public health funding and Brexit. While both have broadly similar objectives at their core (ensure public health is protected and prioritised at a national level and members’ voices are heard and acted upon), I was drawn to the Brexit role because it seemed like an opportunity to try out one of my career options – making lasting health improvements through upstream, national-level policy change: embedding health in all policies.

I was lucky to be selected to join the 10-strong team and, since November, we’ve been working together to agree the three policy asks: 1) calling on the Government to amend the EU (Withdrawal) Bill with a ‘do no harm’ clause; 2) maintain a relationship with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and; 3) secure health-focused post-Brexit trade agreements enabling the UK to improve health.  I’m currently working on the first of these projects and needless to say, this isn’t an ordinary placement.

As Brexit negotiations started last year, the project has been fast-paced. Two weeks ago, I was listening to Lord Crisp talk about the importance of Brexit on public health and since then, ‘do no harm’ has been tabled as a possible amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill and will be discussed at Committee Stage in the House of Lords in the next couple of weeks.  This is genuinely upstream public health and it’s rewarding to see decision makers taking public health seriously.

The timescales for the project are incredibly tight, so there’s often a sense of urgency and a need to get things done now, which I enjoy, and with an increasing work-load, we are always prioritising to maximise impact. To date, we have had meetings with Peers, and written briefings and proactive and reactive press statements. Next up on my list of things to do is writing a speech for a Peer; this isn’t an opportunity I would have got elsewhere.

The potential health consequences of Brexit are so wide-ranging that it needs a team with varied expertise working collaboratively – I’m giving public health input into comms messages while learning about the parliamentary process. This is a genuine example of ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’.

The FPH Policy and Communications team is a very hard working team, but the office ethos is light and fun, so coming to work is a real pleasure.  I feel like part of the team – my (terrible) hand-drawn self-portrait is on the office wall alongside the others’.  Not only am I gaining evidence for policy and management learning outcomes, but I’m learning how to motivate others, develop teams and chair meetings.  I feel that my self-development is prioritised and the office is a safe environment to learn how to be the best version of me.

It’s been incredibly exciting to be so closely involved in this project so far and I’m looking forward to the work that’s still to come this year.  If this sounds like something you’d like to get involved with, the FPH Policy and Communications team is on the lookout for more people like me to get involved in the campaign on a regular basis. The kind of things they’d be looking for help with are:

• Asking for your views as they develop policy
• Helping to decide which campaign messaging works best
• Championing FPH campaigns on social media
• Speaking up at conferences and events you’re attending
• Responding to questionnaires and surveys that they will be doing throughout the campaign

If you’d like to find out more, please contact Mark, FPH’s senior policy officer, at MarkWeiss@fph.org.uk. And finally, don’t forget to keep an eye on Twitter over the coming months to follow progress on the ‘do no harm’ amendment and wider Brexit campaign. You can follow FPH here and you can follow me here.