New beginning in 2016

I have been very honoured to be the recipient of the HKJCDPRI Overseas training Fellow scholarship to work as an intern in Public Health England for a few months. The first week of 2016 has been a very exciting week for me, moving back to London again and starting a new job at a totally new environment.

As much of my work centers around the UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 – 2030 (“UNISDR conference” in future references), it was easy to engage in my tasks without much induction.

Thankfully, one of my first assigned tasks was to research for a poster about Public Health England’s (PHE) work for poster presentation during the UNISDR conference. While doing the background reading for this poster, I was able to quickly understand the vast range of services provided and work PHE is involved in.

Not only is PHE heavily involved in protecting health of the national population, producing extreme weather plans such as the cold weather and heatwave plan, it is also involved in numerous partnerships at a regional and international level, such as collaborations with WHO Europe and their work on Ebola in Sierra Leone. It was eye-widening to see the vast number of departments within PHE and to see the variety of work done in PHE at so many levels. I think I should make it my goal to understand more the work for each of the teams here!