Better Health For All

By Neil Squires, the elected International Registrar on FPH’s Board and member of FPH’s Brexit Advisory Board

I am very pleased to have been re-elected for a second term as International Registrar. The past 3 years have helped to demonstrate the real potential of FPH members to contribute to public health development in other countries and opportunities for members to engage globally are now beginning to increase. Over the last couple of years we have delivered training in Odisha, India, which has provided public health leadership skill training to 300 senior personal in the Government of Odisha. That work sparked requests for similar support in other States and an invitation for FPH and PHE to support the development of India’s MPH curriculum – an important in-road in to developing the next generation of public health leaders in India.

Similarly, the Pakistan Special Interest Group (SIG) has been increasingly active, working alongside PHE, developing a mentorship programme for health leaders in Pakistan. Stronger links have been made with both the National Institute of Health and with Academic Schools of Public Health, laying the foundation for future capacity building work. This programmes of work were commissioned using Overseas Development Aid (ODA) funding, and respond to needs identified by host countries. In addition, the Africa SIG has made strong connections with the Public Health Foundation of Africa, meeting public health leaders from across Africa in Nigeria, and has developed a network of health professionals who will be the cornerstone of future efforts to build on African Public Health Assets to strengthen Regional capability.

In addition to work with resource poor countries, there are an increasing number of requests to FPH from wealthier countries wishing to build stronger public health systems and adopt competency based training. A recent funded mission to Kuwait has created opportunities for potential future collaboration, where we hope to draw on a number of FPH members who have expressed interest in supporting training and public health capacity development. These funded opportunities both allow FPH to support our partners to develop their public health capacity and also generated the necessary income to enable FPH members to work internationally, helping to cross-subsidise work in the poorest countries.

At a time when it seems even more important that the UK remains actively committed and engaged internationally, the work of the Global Health Committee provides a real opportunity to productively engage in support of our colleagues in other countries as we collectively strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In June FPH will organise a global session for the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER), where we hope to promote a coming together of a number of international networks committed to strengthening public health training and capacity globally, linking this to support of stronger national public health agency development. There is a significant opportunity and appetite for the international public health community to come together to tackle common concerns linked to poverty reduction, inequality, to global threats such as climate change, and to tackle global challenges such as violence.

Collaboration with other Royal Colleges remains an important objective, and strengthening relationships across the UK health system in support of global public health a priority. We are actively seeking committed members to join one of a number of causes that have global dimension, where there is a real opportunity to shape the future work and growing global profile of the Faculty of Public Health. These are opportunities we encourage all interested members to engage in, with a growing international membership to serve and an expansion in our practitioner members, who can help us champion multi-disciplinary public health globally.

To find out more about FPH Special Interest Groups specialising in global public health, click here.