International environmental health skills, knowledge, and qualifications: Enhancing professional practice through agreements between countries

Environmental health is practiced primarily at the local level; however, many of the skills held by environmental health practitioners (EHPs) are transferable globally. There is currently a shortage of EHPs in many parts of the world and formally recognizing the transferability of skills and knowledge within the profession might encourage people to consider environmental health as a profession, helping to address the shortage. To facilitate this transferability, our global community of practice has mapped the environmental health practice requirements of the U.S., UK, and Australia to enable comparison of each one to the others and demonstrate the level of similarity in practice requirements. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between the various professional bodies that oversee environmental health practice, which would allow qualif ied EHPs to practice in any of these countries. This flexibility would benefit the profession, professional practice, and individuals. MOUs are a way to recognize the similarities and di†erences between practices in these countries and provide pathways to address di†erences when they exist, such as via short courses and work experience. We present data to illustrate our argument that there is much overlap in the practice of EHPs. We see our research as a first step to engage with professional bodies in other countries and to facilitate MOUs between many countries, both to raise the profile of environmental health globally and to provide an attractive pathway for people to consider environmental health as a profession.

Keywords

Cross-country recognition Environmental health practice United Kingdom United States Australia

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/30217

Citation

Ross, K. E., Dyjack, D. T., Choonara, A., Davis, G., Dawson, H., Hannelly, T., Lynch, Z., Mitchell, G., Ploompuu, I., Rodrigues, M. A., & Shaw, L. (2024). International environmental health skills, knowledge, and qualifications: Enhancing professional practice through agreements between countries. Journal of Environmental Health, 87(8), 20–23. https://pubs.neha.org/view/900636073/20/

Publisher

NEHA-National Environmental Health Association

Collections

ESS - TBIO - Artigos
ESS - SA - Artigos

CC License

Without CC licence

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