Improving workforce capacity - October 2016

The annual Communicable Disease Control Workshop was held on November 16 and 17. Over 100 surveillance officers, public health officers, epidemiologists and trainees attended and participated in scenario-based training on foodborne disease investigation and response.

The annual Environmental Health Policy and Practice days were held in February of 2015. Topics covered included wind farms, loose fill asbestos, and responding to water quality risks. The events were attended by a broad representation of environmental health officers and, for the water quality sessions, the water industry. Steve Hrudey, a Canadian public health expert, spoke of a number of international water quality incidents.

The NSW Aboriginal Environmental Health Officer Training Program aims to address labour shortage in the environmental health workforce and to develop an Aboriginal workforce with leadership and technical skills to progress environmental health issues. The Aboriginal Environmental Health Unit manages and administers the training program which is delivered through 50/50 funding partnerships with public health units and local government.

In 2015:

• Two new trainees were employed, bringing the cohort of Aboriginal trainee environmental health officers in the training program to a total of 12. Of these trainees: three are employed by and based in public health units; two are employed by public health units and based in local government; and seven are employed by and based in local government.
• A further two trainees completed their studies, bringing the total number of graduate Aboriginal environmental health officers from the training program to 15.

Public health emergency preparedness training

In 2015, the Office of the Chief Health Officer delivered a number of key public health emergency preparedness training courses that included:

• The annual three day specialised public health commander course was held for 17 participants in June 2015. The course aims to enhance the ability of senior NSW public health professionals to effectively lead teams during responses to emergencies or major incidents. The course is accredited to enable participants to meet the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) Control a Level 3 Incident and Conduct Briefing and Debriefing competency standards. The course also reinforces existing emergency management concepts and arrangements including how to apply an incident control system.
• The annual Public Health Controller emergency training day was held in May 2015. The 2015 training focussed on engaging and communicating with the local community in the acute phase of an emergency. The sessions included presentations on the Hazelwood coal mine fire in Victoria and on the Chester Hill waste fire in NSW – both complex case studies from which lessons were learned, many of them around the issue of communicating the risks to the community in an often rapidly changing situation.
• e-learning modules in public health emergency continue to be available for all health staff to complete on both the GEM and HETI online platforms. A new online module has been made available in 2015 to provide guidance on the intersection between public health and local government environmental health officers during public health responses.