How Covid changes the Environment
COVID19 has shed a cold light on many of our societies. Health and social inequalities within societies and between countries, have led to enormous extra costs. As we deal with the complex challenges of COVID19, and climate change, how we choose to structure our societies will matter more than ever.
Digital health
Digital health has promised health system transformation, and universally failed to deliver. They are many reasons for this, but one key issue is that the data are usually organisation centred, and not person centred.
Climate change and public health – a dual role
COVID19 is a challenge for public health. Climate change is an existential threat for our civilisation, and possibly our species. Does public health have a part to play in meeting the challenges of climate change, and if so what? Is there a public health of information and lies? Should there be? How do we use the tools and methods of public health to explore futures?
Health futures in a mobility
‘Times change, and we are changed with them’, as the 16th century phrase has it. Whole subdisciplines, including environmental science, computing, health informatics, and health device development, have grown up in that time. Has the core practice of public health changed? Does it need to? Should it? If so, we need to lead and shape the changes. We need to identify futures for our discipline, and figure out how to get there. If we don’t, others will, and that is not necessarily for the benefit of our practice, our practitioners, or the public.
Learning from the pandemic
In many ways the world was fortunate with SARS-CoV-2. Much pandemic planning had focussed on a more lethal, and more infectious pathogen, which may yet land. While certain features of SARS-CoV-2 made it a serious public health challenge, notably the high prevalence of infectious people with few or no symptoms, it could have been much worse.
