Fit for the future: a review of the public health workforce

In March 2015, the remit letter from Department of Health (DH) to Public Health England (PHE) set out the following:

The Government has also commissioned PHE to review and make recommendations on the current operation of the public health system in relation to the future capability, skills and experience of the public health workforce to operate across all the public health functions, including the duty of Local Authorities to provide public health advice to Clinical Commissioning Groups.

PHE’s review of the future public health workforce will consider the medium term (about 5 years) issues and needs of the workforce. Specifically, it will look at:

• what capacity and capability we need in the public health system to protect and improve the public’s health
• what we need to start doing and putting in place to get us ready for the future

DH has also commissioned a longer-term look (up to 2035) from the Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI). The ‘Public health workforce of the future’ project is a collaboration between PHE and CfWI, which will address both questions at the same time because:

• they need to engage broadly the same stakeholder group
• there will be commonality between the medium and longer term issues