Dr Stephen Battersby, Chair, CIEH Council
I am delighted to have been invited to contribute a guest editorial to JEHR during the year that I chair the Council of the CIEH. I believe that this Journal is one of the most important recent developments of the Chartered Institute.
Environmental health practitioners, in common with other professionals, have to keep up to date with developments and the evidence-base that should support their work. It is no longer acceptable or adequate to say that we deal with an issue one way because we have always done so. EHPs and others seeking to protect and improve public health have an obligation to be properly equipped for their work, and JEHR can help promulgate evidence to support policy decisions and actions.
Many professionals working in environmental health have not always accessed and utilised research to support them in that work, nor have they seen it as part of their professional development to undertake and report research. In one of my own areas of interest, housing, it has long been assumed that interventions (whether by enforcement or financial support) automatically improve health and justify such action. Only in the past 15 to 20 years has there been serious research into the health effects of poor housing in the modern context that could justify such action, and indeed this research has shown that some efforts (and resources) have been misdirected. There is still relatively little research into the health gains (if any) accruing from state interventions – this may be a research subject for someone to pursue, perhaps linked to the introduction of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. Practitioners have allowed legislation to dictate, and limit action rather than provide a basis for dealing with public health problems. Research should provide the evidence to raise questions as to why we do things, and how we could better achieve our objectives.
Such research, of course, is not the sole prerogative of academics away from the front-line. JEHR provides an outlet for robust practice-based research carried out at a local level and written up as a professional evaluation. Partnership working is important and is being encouraged at all levels in environmental health practice. Thus in considering how you may contribute to the evidence-base, it may be that practice-based research carried out jointly with one or more of our professional partners may be appropriate – this would be of particular interest to JEHR.
JEHR provides a convenient and obvious place for EHPs and our partner professionals to report sound research on environmental and public health. I hope that we will all increasingly think about how we can undertake studies from our work that can be reported in JEHR and thus contribute to the body of knowledge on which improvements to public health policy and practice can be based.