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Research sector criticises decision to abolish Public Health England in the middle of a pandemic
Senior research figures have expressed serious concerns about the government’s announcement that it will create a new organisation to lead the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP) will focus on public health protection and infectious disease capability, the Department of Health and Social Care announced on 18 August.
It will bring together Public Health England, which has led much of the pandemic response work, as well as the infection-tracking organisation NHS Test and Trace and the analytical capability of the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which provides epidemiological expertise.
Dido Harding, head of NHS Test and Trace and chair of NHS Improvement, will lead the NIHP as well as NHS Test and Trace, PHE and the JBC.
In a speech delivered at a Policy Exchange event about the future of public health, health secretary Matt Hancock said the new organisation would ensure a “stronger, more joined-up response to protect people and the communities in which they live”.
But many academics are unconvinced by the move.
“The decision to abolish PHE in the middle of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic without consultation while the UK parliament is not sitting is scandalous,” said Patty Kostkova, a professor of digital health and director of the University College London Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergency.
“Setting up a new National Institute for Health Protection by a merge with dysfunctional private NHS Track and Trace operation under leadership of Dido Harding, who has no expertise in public health, seems yet another purely politically motivated move to shift blame for government’s failures over handing of the Covid-19 crises,” she added.
“What we need is truly well-funded scientifically independent national public health agency, operating without government’s influence, working together with re-established local public health function responsible for local policies, disease prevention and control, including test and trace.”
Simon Kolstoe, a senior lecturer in the school of health and care professions at the University of Portsmouth, agreed it was the wrong time to make such changes. He said: “We are in the middle of a pandemic. The worst time to rebuild a ship is in the middle of a storm.”
Anne Johnson, vice-president at the Academy of Medical Sciences, acknowledged that the public health system needs more capacity to deal with health threats such as Covid-19, but described the creation of a new national public health body as a “huge and complex task”.
“Making such big changes during a pandemic risks temporarily impeding public health functions and is a high-risk strategy,” she said.
Johnson called for more information about how and when the changes would be implemented as well as how health protection initiatives would be delivered in future.
“We also need to know how lessons learned from the pandemic response will feed into the design of a strengthened public health system,” she added.
“The new organisation will only be fully effective if it receives sufficient and sustained resources, is sufficiently independent from government and is given the ability to lead cutting edge research in collaboration with academic and other partners including industry.”
The academy’s president, Robert Lechler, warned against the “temptation to entirely redesign our public health system through a Covid lens”.
“We must keep in mind that illnesses such as HIV, heart disease, cancer and diabetes remain significant causes of UK ill health and premature death,” he said. “Increasing rates of obesity and an ageing population also present complex health challenges. Any changes we make to our public health system now must give benefits both throughout the pandemic and beyond.”
Beth Thompson, head of UK and EU policy and advocacy at the Wellcome Trust, agreed, saying: “We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that public health threats are not limited to Covid-19 and other infectious diseases. We cannot afford to neglect urgent public health challenges such as mental health and drug-resistant infections.”
Asked for comment, the Department of Health and Social Care repeated remarks Hancock made on Sky News.
It quoted him as saying: “In order to keep people safe…we need to bring organisations together now. [We] will do this carefully…All my experience through pandemic told me if you need to act, need to get on with it.”