Working Groups
Environmental Health
The WFPHA Environmental Health Work Group aims to influence international policy on environmental health by bringing environmental health issues to the public health community and a public health approach to the environmental advocacy community. Through work with partners including WHO, UNEP, SAICM, Healthcare without Harm, World Medical Association, IPEN, Global Network For Incineration Alternatives, Toxics Link, Sustainlabour, the Pesticide Action Network, and others the Work Group focus attention on human health effects of environmental hazards and help shape global environmental health and protection policies.
The main programmatic areas are Climate Change, Safe Management of Chemicals, Mercury in Health Care, Asbestos, DDT/Malaria, and Children’s Environmental Health.
The Environmental Working Group invites new Members, representatives of national public health associations, individual public health professionals, and students. Meetings will take place by phone/computer. Activities currently planned for the next year will include policy development for WFPHA, participation in the Strategic Approach To International Chemicals Management in Health Care of UNEP, Mercury treaty negotiations and advocacy for decreased use in health care, and advocacy for improving children’s environmental health in collaboration with WHO.
For more information, please read the Persistent Organic Pollutants
and Human Health Report and the Environmental Working Group Report 2011 or contact Dr. Peter Orris.
Global Health Equity
The WFPHA Equity Work Group uses the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health definitions of “equity” and “health inequities” to guide its work:
Equity is “the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically”.
Health inequities “involve more than inequality with respect to health determinants, access to the resources needed to improve and maintain health or health outcomes” but also “entail a failure to avoid or overcome inequalities that infringe on fairness and human rights norms”. (WHO)
Key areas of public health that will be addressed from a life course perspective by the working group are women’s health, child health, disability and chronic conditions, education equity, income disparities, and social justice.
The Equity Work Group will do the following:
- develop policy statements using the best evidence available
- advocate for WFPHA policies using appropriate social strategies to gain political will for change and adoption of the policies
- provide a world-wide forum for WFPHA Members interested in health equity
The Work Group will meet annually at the WFPHA Congress and communicate electronically via the internet between meetings.
For more information, please contact Prof. Bettina Borisch or Dr. Deborah Walker.
Oral Health
More information coming soon.
Public Health Education
The WFPHA Public Health Education Work Group was formed in 2010 with 3 specific items in its action plan:
- Develop a strategy to globally harmonize essential public health functions and competencies based on practice needs (performance standards);
- Define and apply standards of quality for public health education and training (PEER Review, accreditation);
- Develop academic and institutional capacity (based on a needs and demand analysis).
The Members of the WGE represent the Public Health workforce in its global variety and are therefore well-equipped to undertake the task at hand while bearing in mind the need for a flexible approach
The WGE intends to draft a competency assessment after completing the previous item and validating it as an Internet-based self-administered questionnaire for Public Health professionals.
The WGE also plans to approach National Public Health Associations for assistance in local implementations of the assessment questionnaire, i.e. translating to local languages and dialects, adaptations to reflect multi-cultural diversity, logistics in data collection.
The primary task of the workgroup at the moment is to examine the existing models for Public Health Functions/Services/Operations and reach, if possible, an acceptable terminology based upon the similarities between the models.
For more information, please contact Dr. Ehud Miron.
