Rebuilding to shape a better future: the role of young professionals in the public health workforce.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the extreme needs of the public health workforce. As societies discuss how to build up the capacity and infrastructure of their systems, it is crucial that young professionals are involved. Previous attempts to incorporate young professionals into the public health workforce have wrestled with inaccessibility, tokenisation, and a lack of mentorship, leading to a loss of potential workforce members and a non-representative workforce that reinforces systemic societal exclusion of diverse young people. These barriers must be addressed through robust mentorship structures, intentional recruitment and continuous support, as well as genuine recognition of the contributions of young professionals to build the sustainable, interdisciplinary, unified public health that is necessary for the future.

‘Build forward better’ must include heavy investment in government capacities to engage with communities and civil society

Civil society and community groups are active players in the COVID-19 response, providing support, advice and information where government reach is poor. Yet most governments have not managed to bring civil society’s perspectives, insights, and experiences into the COVID-19 response in a systematic way. If the world is to ‘build forward better’, more regular and systematised government-civil society engagement will need to underpin a shifttowards more inclusive health governance. Doing so successfully will require heavy investments in capacity-building for government actors to value and feel comfortable managing and sustaining participatory spaces and in skills to bring forward the kind of governance needed to build resilience against the next pandemic.

Public health leadership and the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised that calls for clearer mandates and leadership from health authorities has gone unheard for decades. Preventable occurrences in response to the pandemic depict that countries in the WHO European Region suffer from various issues that undermine public health leadership – a necessary capacity to navigate extraordinary times, such as these. What remains clear is that there is a dire need for public health to be reinforced and enabled to ensure effective public health responses. Furthermore, internal siloes within the field must be broken down and collaboration within and across sectors nurtured, to help build up resilience to handle future emergencies.