Standing on the shoulders of giants: CIEH digital archive launched

In embracing the profound challenges that 2024 brings, it is sometimes easy to forget the contributions made by our predecessors.

Everyone working in environmental health today owes a debt to the practitioners of yesteryear. And as the voice of environmental health since 1883, CIEH has “a whole lotta history” (as noughties pop sensation Girls Aloud put it).

The past can teach us many useful lessons. So, to reflect that, we are launching a digital archive of documents for members, many of which have never been online before.

We are starting the archive with two sections:

1. History of environmental health

       

This includes free digital versions of two excellent books which we previously sold:

• The Stuff of Life - Public Health In Edwardian Britain – by William Hatchett, Stephen Battersby, David Clapham, Tim Everett, Ava Greenwell, Jill Stewart, Jim Stewart and Stuart Spear.
• Putting wrong things right: Environmental Health from 1952 to 2012 – edited by William Hatchett.

The books are supplemented by two shorter documents: A Century of Progress - history of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers 1883-1983 by Reginald Johnson (Secretary of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers 1950-1977) and For the common good - 150 Years of Public Health which we published in 1998.

2. Key reports

This section includes various landmark reports we produced from 1980-2005. My eye was especially drawn to Creating empty beds - a new approach which was created in 2001 to emphasise the role the profession plays in reducing the burden on the NHS. This is an evergreen topic which is also being discussed by our Workforce Satellite Panel this year with a view to influencing the discussions in the lead up to and beyond the general election.

Others may be more interested in K.J. Tyler’s straightforward Justification for a separate environmental health department from 1980 or the far more expansive Agendas For Change (1997) and The Hanna Report: Aspects of change in local government (2005).

Adding to the archive

We will be adding further material to the archive in coming months, notably subsections covering food, public health, environmental protection, etc. and we will keep you informed as the archive grows.

I hope that this brings back good memories for some members and provides inspiration to others.

Our digital archive can probably never be completely comprehensive, but if you have copies of significant items that you feel should be added to it, please get in touch. (We are unfortunately not able to scan large volumes of material ourselves and are not able to receive large personal archives.)

Activating the archive

I am conscious that there will be many members reading this who know a great deal more about these documents than I do. If you were involved with their creation and would like to write a short blog post about a particular document (perhaps reflecting on the context at the time and what has changed since?) please contact the marketing team: [email protected].

With thanks to Will Hatchett and all the authors of the documents, former Research and Information Manager Tina Garrity - and to Diana Tumova, Ian Gray and Chris Day for raising the issue of republishing older material online.