A day in the life of a Director of Public Health

Greg Fell is Director of Public Health for Sheffield City Council. Here we follow a busy day in his normal working life.

7am – Emails on the train

Work starts when I get on the train. During the journey I go through emails and make sure my inbox is under control. This tends to form my to-do list for the day.

8am – At my desk

I work on closing a recent investigation we had into an outbreak of legionnaire’s disease. Ordinarily a city like Sheffield might expect something like six cases a year but we’d experienced a significant increase and it was my job to manage an investigation into the source of the disease, and what needed to be done to address it. I’ve become somewhat of an expert on cooling towers (often used in large buildings’ or factories’ temperature control) as part of this - they're often the source of an outbreak like this. There’s now an action plan for the problem to be addressed, and the environmental health team will take over to make sure it’s implemented correctly.

9am – Black mould

A type of black mould was discovered recently in a school and I’ve just begun the investigation into this. It involves lots of conversations with different people in environmental health, consultants in risk assessment and Public Health England. Just one aspect is the communications that need to go out to parents. In this case we’re assuring them that there is very little risk of impact on their children’s health.

As with almost everything that comes up in this job, I’m really reliant on other organisations and experts to inform the outcomes of the investigation. Success in this job always boils down to the strength of your interpersonal relationships. I don’t just know the answer to an issue that comes up – there’s a lot of detective work, research and teamwork that goes into resolving an issue.

10am – The Coca-Cola bus is coming to town…

I’m writing a paper on what local authorities should take into consideration when entering into commercial partnerships with big companies. This is something I’m quite interested in and I wrote a blog about it recently. The Coca-Cola Christmas truck tour is an obvious example of where we need to be aware of the tensions between the gains when these events generate money, and the obvious damage when unhealthy foods and habits are heavily promoted. I think it’s important for organisations to be aware of the tensions and to carefully think about their policies so that the right balance can be struck.

11am – Fuel poverty meeting

I’m meeting with members of the council’s housing team to discuss the work they’re doing on fuel poverty. They’re targeting a number of homes that have been identified as at-risk this winter, and are working to improve insulation and heating for them. As temperatures drop it’s worrying that anyone should have to make the choice between eating and heating their home so the project is really crucial.

12pm – Head to board meetings

I have a quick sandwich on the walk over to my two big meetings of the day.

The Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) governing body meeting is a three-hour meeting where we discuss strategies and policies. I’m there to make sure the CCG is doing its duty when it comes to addressing health inequalities and improving health and wellbeing.

Next is another hour-long meeting of the health and wellbeing board. It’s a monthly meeting including, for example, directors of children’s and adults’ services, and medical directors of both the CCG and local hospital trust. We discuss a wide range of issues from acute stroke care to dementia to oral health. This is one of the things I love about my job – it’s so spectacularly varied.

4:30pm – Back at my desk, and two final meetings

A quick meeting about how we’re doing with using the planning process to improve health and wellbeing. We’re lucky to have an excellent Chief Planning Officer in Sheffield who agrees that the design of our spaces can and should take public health issues into consideration.

The other meeting is with our Head of Licencing about our proposal to create something called a ‘cumulative impact policy’ (CIP). This effectively creates a zone of the city where applications for things like 24-hour off-licences will be given a higher level of scrutiny. Applicants would have to outline how they’ll ensure they don’t add to anti-social behaviour, which has become an issue in one particular area of the city where 24-hour off-licences have become quite concentrated.

5:20pm – Back on the train

I spend my journey home checking emails again and reading papers for tomorrow’s meetings. I finish the day with an uphill cycle home from the station, which really clears the mind and makes me feel like I’ve got my exercise for the day.

Much like exercise, a challenging part of my job is that you don’t often get the satisfaction of seeing instant results. Lots of the things I work on won’t see tangible results for many years to come, and even then may be very difficult to measure. I know that they will help people though and that’s enough to assure me I’ll get up tomorrow morning looking forward to going to work.