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Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia

Climate change is the most urgent and significant public health risk facing the globe. In Australia, it has been identified that Environmental Health Officers/Practitioners (EHOs/EHPs, hereafter EHOs) are a currently underutilized source of knowledge and skills that can contribute to climate change...

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Autores principales: Whiley, Harriet, Smith, James C., Moore, Nicole, Burton, Rebecca, Conci, Nadia, Psarras, Helen, Ross, Kirstin E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10379352/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37510617
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20146384
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author Whiley, Harriet
Smith, James C.
Moore, Nicole
Burton, Rebecca
Conci, Nadia
Psarras, Helen
Ross, Kirstin E.
author_facet Whiley, Harriet
Smith, James C.
Moore, Nicole
Burton, Rebecca
Conci, Nadia
Psarras, Helen
Ross, Kirstin E.
author_sort Whiley, Harriet
collection PubMed
description Climate change is the most urgent and significant public health risk facing the globe. In Australia, it has been identified that Environmental Health Officers/Practitioners (EHOs/EHPs, hereafter EHOs) are a currently underutilized source of knowledge and skills that can contribute to climate change adaptation planning at the local government level. The ability of local government EHOs to utilize their local knowledge and skills in human health risk assessment during a public health emergency was demonstrated through their role in the response to COVID-19. This study used a survey and follow up interviews to examine the roles and responsibilities of EHOs during the COVID-19 pandemic and used the results to examine the potential of the workforce to tackle climate change and health related issues. What worked well, what regulatory tools were helpful, how interagency collaboration worked and what barriers or hindering factors existed were also explored. A workforce review of EHOs in South Australia was also undertaken to identify current and future challenges facing EHOs and their capacity to assist in climate change preparedness. The findings demonstrated that the workforce was used in the response to COVID-19 for varying roles by councils, including in education and communication (both internally and externally) as well as monitoring and reporting compliance with directions. Notably, half the workforce believed they could have been better utilized, and the other half thought they were well utilized. The South Australian Local Government Functional Support Group (LGFSG) was praised by the workforce for a successful approach in coordinating multiagency responses and communicating directions in a timely fashion. These lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic should be incorporated into climate change adaptation planning. To ensure consistent messaging and a consolidated information repository, a centralized group should be used to coordinate local government climate change adaptation plans in relation to environmental health and be included in all future emergency management response plans. The surveyed EHOs identified environmental health issues associated with climate change as the most significant future challenge; however, concerningly, participants believe that a lack of adequate resourcing, leading to workforce shortages, increasing workloads and a lack of support, is negatively impacting the workforce’s preparedness to deal with these emerging issues. It was suggested that the misperception of environmental health and a failure to recognize its value has resulted in a unique dilemma where EHOs and their councils find themselves caught between managing current workload demands and issues, and endeavouring to prepare, as a priority, for emerging environmental health issues associated with climate change and insufficient resources.
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spelling pubmed-103793522023-07-29 Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia Whiley, Harriet Smith, James C. Moore, Nicole Burton, Rebecca Conci, Nadia Psarras, Helen Ross, Kirstin E. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Climate change is the most urgent and significant public health risk facing the globe. In Australia, it has been identified that Environmental Health Officers/Practitioners (EHOs/EHPs, hereafter EHOs) are a currently underutilized source of knowledge and skills that can contribute to climate change adaptation planning at the local government level. The ability of local government EHOs to utilize their local knowledge and skills in human health risk assessment during a public health emergency was demonstrated through their role in the response to COVID-19. This study used a survey and follow up interviews to examine the roles and responsibilities of EHOs during the COVID-19 pandemic and used the results to examine the potential of the workforce to tackle climate change and health related issues. What worked well, what regulatory tools were helpful, how interagency collaboration worked and what barriers or hindering factors existed were also explored. A workforce review of EHOs in South Australia was also undertaken to identify current and future challenges facing EHOs and their capacity to assist in climate change preparedness. The findings demonstrated that the workforce was used in the response to COVID-19 for varying roles by councils, including in education and communication (both internally and externally) as well as monitoring and reporting compliance with directions. Notably, half the workforce believed they could have been better utilized, and the other half thought they were well utilized. The South Australian Local Government Functional Support Group (LGFSG) was praised by the workforce for a successful approach in coordinating multiagency responses and communicating directions in a timely fashion. These lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic should be incorporated into climate change adaptation planning. To ensure consistent messaging and a consolidated information repository, a centralized group should be used to coordinate local government climate change adaptation plans in relation to environmental health and be included in all future emergency management response plans. The surveyed EHOs identified environmental health issues associated with climate change as the most significant future challenge; however, concerningly, participants believe that a lack of adequate resourcing, leading to workforce shortages, increasing workloads and a lack of support, is negatively impacting the workforce’s preparedness to deal with these emerging issues. It was suggested that the misperception of environmental health and a failure to recognize its value has resulted in a unique dilemma where EHOs and their councils find themselves caught between managing current workload demands and issues, and endeavouring to prepare, as a priority, for emerging environmental health issues associated with climate change and insufficient resources. MDPI 2023-07-18 /pmc/articles/PMC10379352/ /pubmed/37510617 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20146384 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Whiley, Harriet
Smith, James C.
Moore, Nicole
Burton, Rebecca
Conci, Nadia
Psarras, Helen
Ross, Kirstin E.
Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia
title Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia
title_full Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia
title_fullStr Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia
title_full_unstemmed Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia
title_short Climate Change and Health: Challenges to the Local Government Environmental Health Workforce in South Australia
title_sort climate change and health: challenges to the local government environmental health workforce in south australia
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10379352/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37510617
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20146384
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