Local councils struggling to address climate change and public health issues might do well to employ more environmental health officers.
A team of researchers at Flinders University found that half the EHO workforce believed they could have been better utilised during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The surveyed EHO officers also identified environmental health issues associated with climate change as their most significant future challenge and believed there was a lack of adequate resourcing.
Existing challenges with climate change and health-related issues also led to workplace shortages, increased workloads, and lack of support – which all negatively impacted the industry’s preparedness to deal with emerging issues such as COVID-19.
The paper recommends improvements for councils to ensure consistent messaging, consolidate information repository and start a centralised group, which would coordinate local government climate change adaptation plans concerning the environment and ensure the group is included in future emergency management response plans.
EHO profession identity is relatively poor, apparent from the diverse response regarding what should be in the role’s scope of practice.
Lead researcher Professor Kirstin Ross said that local councils and EHOs have found themselves “caught between managing current workload demands and issues” due to their failure to recognise the value of environmental health, which led to the groups “trying to urgently prepare for emerging environmental health issues associated with climate change by bolstering insufficient current resources.”
Flinders University Associate Professor Harriet Whiley added, “In Australia, environmental health officers are currently an underutilised source of knowledge and skills, uniquely positioned to contribute to climate change adaptation planning at a local government level.
“However, high workloads, under-resourcing, and a misperception around their role, both internally and externally, impact their ability to contribute.”
Nicole Moore, research co-author and community health team leader at the City of Onkaparinga in South Australia said there is scope for EHO to become more involved as extreme weather becomes more intense in the coming decades.
The study also showed a significant shift in demographics since the last review in 2010, with most EHOs are now older and increasingly female.
The professionals are also now more experienced, with 61 per cent of respondents with more than 10 years of experience – compared to 48 per cent in 2010.
Researchers suggest that the current Australian environmental health qualifications accredited by Environmental Health Australia using a knowledge matrix were insufficient, and the workforce required more uniform recognition of accredited degrees.
While a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees meets the accreditation policy, Professor Kirstin Ross said there needs to be uniform recognition nationwide as public health acts vary between states and territories.