John Middleton

Law enforcement and public health agencies operate in the context of their national government policies and resources. But improving and protecting health and community safety are made more difficult by four dark geopolitical forces which have been accelerating in recent years. Neoliberalism is driving governments to pursue low tax, low regulation small-state policies and aiding the expansion of uncontrolled globalization and colonialization of health-damaging manufacturing and services by multinational companies. The “Sovereign individuals,” first described in 1997, are the super-rich who have mastery over information technologies to avoid taxes and hide their wealth from governments. The vast offshoring of wealth has led to increasing inequalities in wealth and health, between rich and poor, further adding to civil distrust and unrest. Loss of revenues prevents government funding of health, welfare, and public protection whilst creating greater need for it. To explain the increasing poverty and harshness of life for the masses, there has been a rebirth and rise of populism. This has accelerated political corruption, created culture wars, fomented distrust of others, and added to global political instability. The information revolution has influenced all of these: it has created its own dark geopolitical force through the explosion of social media and industrial disinformation undermining individual critical thinking and democratic processes. Law enforcement and public health agencies face the consequences of these dark forces in their daily work, but they also need to understand more and develop more effective partnership responses to counter the worst excesses of the new geopolitical realities.

Where there is no vision, the people perish’ has never been truer than today. We need new models of how to train the future public health leaders in the 21st century to improve and protect people and planet”. The Maastricht University Public Health Leadership course has been described previously (1). The course aims to create leaders with vision, who can see a future different to the status quo, who can influence and drive change, who are able to communicate their vision and win others to embrace and implement it.

Health is a global concern. No one country or health system can tackle public health problems on their own. Climate change, enironmental degradation, conflict, human trafficking and migration, substance addictions, the uncontrolled corporate health damage caused by multinational corporations, economic catastrophe, global market collapse- all these require concerted public health action from local to global level. Schools of public health need to be equipped to educate, train and research problems of the health of the public and planet in the 21st century. The need for actions by schools of public health has never been more vital.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has put unprecedented pressure on the hospital sector around the world. It has shown the importance of preparing and planning in the future for an outbreak that overwhelms every aspect of a hospital on a rapidly expanding scale. We conducted a scoping review to identify, map, and systemize existing knowledge about the relationships between COVID-19 and hospital infrastructure adaptation and capacity planning worldwide. We searched the Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed and hand-searched gray papers published in English between December 2019 and December 2021. A total of 106 papers were included: 102 empirical studies and four technical reports. Empirical studies entailed five reviews, 40 studies focusing on hospital infrastructure adaptation and planning during the pandemics, and 57 studies on modeling the hospital capacity needed, measured mostly by the number of beds. The majority of studies were conducted in high-income countries and published within the first year of the pandemic. The strategies adopted by hospitals can be classified into short-term (repurposing medical and non-medical buildings, remote adjustments, and establishment of de novo structures) and long-term (architectural and engineering modifications, hospital networks, and digital approaches). More research is needed, focusing on specific strategies and the quality assessment of the evidence.

ASPHER Statement: Déjà vu? Planning for the Covid-19 Third Wave and Planning for the Winter 2021–22

ASPHER Statement: Towards a Carbon-Neutral Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region

Climate change is putting the achievement of all Sustainable Development Goals at risk and leads to negative impacts on human health and well-being. Consequently, tremendous social responsibility lies with public health professionals and their associations. Therefore, this study addressed the following question: “How can the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) best support the goals of the European Green Deal through its network of public health schools and departments?” This study looked at the implementation of climate education in public health schools in the European region and climate action taken by these public health schools. An online survey among ASPHER members with a 51% overall response rate (excluding non-European members) shows that 64% of the responding schools provide climate-health educational offerings, while 63% consider these for the future. Additionally, most climate actions taken by the schools were ad hoc actions. These findings show that a systematic approach is missing, and there is a general lack of strategy in most schools. We consequently recommend that schools invest in climate and health education in their curricula and become exemplars for climate action to actively contribute to the achievement of Europe’s climate goals.