The resounding message ringing through the pages of this month's EHJ is for the profession to engage with the new public health agenda. Graham Jukes, CIEH chief executive, writes that the public health structure is in place, policy makers have been primed and help is on hand from the CIEH. All that is now needed is for EHPs in local government to take the initiative and make contact with the public health teams at their local primary care trusts (pcts).

In his opinion piece Ian Gray, CIEH policy officer, echoes this message and tells the profession to stop making excuses about why it is difficult to tackle broader public health issues and try to allocate some time, even if it is half a day a fortnight, to working on some of the public health initiatives coming out of the pcts.

There is also a clarion call from the EHPs that have made the move from local government to local pcts and regional teams in the Health Protection Agency to join them. EHPs working in these new public health delivery agencies are also proselytising on behalf of the profession, alerting their colleagues to the breadth and depth of experience that exists in local government among EHPs.

This is exciting stuff and yet those who qualified as public health inspectors back in the 1970s might allow themselves a wry smile when reading all this. Talking to them, the view is that the profession has come full circle and is now back on track, breaking away from just being a regulatory service and joining the larger public health network. Of course, before 1974 the NHS, through their community health focus, right up to the World Health Organisation provided that network. It was to the WHO where some of the more ambitious public health professionals looked to develop their careers.

Now, once again, it is the NHS that is the main driver for public health, which has raised interesting issues around status. This month, we look at Rwanda and how the CIEH Welsh centre is helping to set up a degree course at the Kigali Health Institute. Like Tanzania, the reason degree status is so important is because professionals working in clinical health in Africa have a history of not listening to public health colleagues because they feel they are not as well qualified, compared to them. The only way that Africa's public health professionals can hope to have an influence is by gaining credibility through further education. Environmental health in Tanzania and Rwanda is in its infancy compared to the UK, and yet the same issues apply. EHPs in the UK are now recognising that if they want to have greater influence within their pcts they are going to have to do further training and join the voluntary register of the Faculty of Public Health. The more EHPs who are on the register the more influence the profession will have on clinical colleagues.

As the old adage goes, there is nothing new under the sun.

Stuart Spear
Editor