COVID-19: The Global Environmental Health Experience

Book excerpt: This book is devoted to the efforts of Environmental Health Practitioners (EHPs), their employers and supportive professional bodies world-wide in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon the first-hand experiences and reflections of EHPs working across the professional discipline in countries around the world, the book highlights how they responded to the initial wave of SARS-CoV-2 infection as it spread globally. It explores how this impacted on their environmental health work as their wider public health skills and expertise were increasingly called upon/ The book recognises the significant contributions that EHPs have made to protect lives and livelihoods since the seriousness of COVID-19 became apparent. It also identifies shortcomings in the response and deployment of personnel and makes a series of recommendations to inform future practice. This book: Captures a moment in history through the experiences of Environmental Health Practitioners in meeting the complex challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Features the observations of front line practitioners on the practical challenges and opportunities encountered globally, suggesting the lessons learnt for current practice in infectious disease prevention and control. Expands upon the reflections of some of the professional bodies around the world as to how the response of EHPs to the COVID-19 pandemic should result in a renewed commitment to public health through Environmental Health. EHPs in current practice and in training, other public health professionals and those looking to build better health protection services, now, and in the future, will find this book a valuable resource to inform the case for the key role of Environmental Health in the current pandemic, in response to future challenges and crises, and in managing risks to health encountered in more usual times.