The field of environmental public health has recently come under the spotlight as never before. It seems that hardly a day goes by without some new story in the press, television, and social media about air pollution, chemical attacks, energy generation, nuclear threats, or the potential dangers of modern technology in its various forms. it is becoming increasingly clear hat the health of the population is shaped by our environment, often in complex ways that are only now beginning to be understood. Human health cannot be separated from planetary health - we shape the health of our planet, and our planet shapes us. To add to all this complexity, new channels of communication , a lack of trust in "experts", and a changing role for Britain in the world present new challenges for PHE's environmental public health community, prompting us to re-think our strategy in the light of the need for a PHE environmental public health service fit for the challenges of 2020 and beyond, while continuing to protect the nation's health from radiation, chemical, and other threats on a daily basis.
Dr David Rhodes, Public Health England
David was appointed as Public Health England's Director of Environmental Public Health in 2017, with responsibility for the Centre for Radiation, Chemical, and Environmental Hazards. His previous role with PHE was as Deputy Director, Financial and Commercial, and Head of Business Development. David gained his PhD from the Queen's University of Belfast before spending a number of years in academic and industrial research at Washington State University and ICI. He was responsible for R&D targeting and North American technology licensing for Zeneca Agrochemicals, and subsequently led various strategic marketing programmes for Syngenta. he joined CAMR (later PHE) in 2002. David was awarded the MBA Prize by Henley Business School for his work on valuation of intellectual property. He is a Certified Licensing Professional and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and has published a number of papers, blogs and book chapters on the subject of innovation, intellectual property and knowledge transfer. He was a founder member of the Corven Innovation Network, serves on the Board of Medilink South West, and is actively involved with various industry and academic knowledge transfer bodies in the UK including PraxisUnico, BioIndustry Association, Licensing Executives Society, and the Pharmaceutical Licensing Group.