A thread that runs through the entire Public Health Funding Campaign is the need to demonstrate the value of public health and the vital work public health professionals do. As Steve Brine, Minister for Public Health and Primary Care, said earlier this year:
The competition for resources isn’t getting less fierce. We all need to get better and smarter at making the case for our share of resources.
As well as gathering and generating the evidence we need to make the case for investing in public health across our three policy ‘asks’, we wanted to find a way to visually bring it to life as well.
As you’ll know from this blog, it’s challenging to find photos that communicate what public health is and the diverse nature of the work our members do, so we decided to change that.
We launched a photo competition to challenge our members and wider public health community to take a photo that illustrates what ‘public health looks like’ through their eyes. The aim was to celebrate the breadth, diversity and importance of public health in the UK and around the world, and we were blown away by the entries.
From the moment we launched the competition in mid-July, we were overwhelmed by the positive responses we received, so it’s important to take this opportunity to thank absolutely everyone who helped us make it such a success. When we closed the competition in October we’d received over 200 entries, including some spectacular images covering a whole range of public health activity from community outreach programmes combating loneliness to immunisation clinics in the Middle East. A large chunk of the entries we received were from non-members, indicating how many people are engaged in FPH and the valuable work our members and other public health professionals do.
The story is not over yet though. Our judging panel, made up of both public health and photography experts, met on 13 November to narrow the impressive array of entries down to a final shortlist. Before beginning the judging, the panel agreed that they wanted each of the selected photos to tell a public health story in its own right and be visually arresting as well as technically proficient. They also wanted the final shortlist as a collection to showcase a broad and diverse range of public health activity. In the end the standard was so high that, instead of 20 photos, this shortlist ended up including almost 30.
It’s now down to you, our members, to decide on the ten photos that will be displayed at FPH’s first ever photography exhibition. The winning photos will also have a permanent home on our website, and will be used as a travelling exhibition, displayed at key events throughout the year.
Please get involved by taking a look at the shortlisted photos, then voting for your five favourites via this link.
We are so excited to hear your views on the final photos, which we can all use to celebrate public health as we see it and strengthen the case for increased funding of our vital public health services. We hope they make you proud to work in public health because they make all of us at FPH proud to represent you.
To cast your vote, click here!
Written by Rachel Thomson, Specialty Registrar and member of FPH’s Public Health Funding project group. You can follow her on Twitter @rachel_thomson. If, like Rachel, you’re a Specialty Registrar and want to get policy & comms experience by joining our Registrar Project Scheme, email policy@fph.org.uk to find out how you can apply.
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