On Thursday, we had guest speaker who’s doing a lot of work with the Department of Homeland Security. He mentioned that most of the disaster and bio-terrorism planning is being done without any public health professionals at the table. That’s a real scary thought to me. Not so much because we are the people who should be there because we are the ones to respond in an emergency, but more so because the designated leaders don’t think to include us.
How can we reverse this blatant disregard for our profession? I attended the last APHA meeting and there were thousands of public health professionals there. Surely someone must recognize that we are being overlooked when it comes to important policy issues. I hope that my up and coming colleagues will work hard to make sure that our voices are heard more often when it comes to influencing policy and changing the awareness level of our profession.
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7 comments:
Dont you think htat public health profesionals should ask to participate. Maybe that will be a different aproach instead of wainting to be invited.....Just an idea.
I think it's awful to exclude public health professionals from this type of preparedness. We should use the PH societies to address them and petition to participate in this process.
which is why i enjoy the idea of a "global health leadership" track here at USC. It's not enough to just have public health professionals, we need leaders to really push for public health issues in the government.
rosie, that's a really good point. it makes me angry not just because i hope to be a future PH professional, but because i believe that a good PH professional can achieve needed changes in cooperation with others and w/o involving PH those changes won't be the best ones for the people. thanks for bringing this up. hopefully we can make our voices heard as professionals. i also think that change can happen in MPH programs so that they are more competitive and rigorous, and more prestigious.
I think the field is changing though and while I wholeheartedly agree that we have to insert ourselves instead of waiting for an invitation, I believe PH is slowly but surely becoming more respectable as more people realize that PH is everything and everywhere. Having said that I think as up and coming PH professionals we have to become advocates for the field.
The exclusion of public health officials is devastating. This same gentleman and I had a discussion about what it will take to include our profession in decision making practices. He firmly believes that it will take an unprecedented disaster. I hope he's wrong.
I agree with Emma's comments in class today and with her above comment...we have to be activist as public health professionals.
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