The idea that the British National Health Service exists in isolation as a “sickness service” just to cure the ill is one that has rapidly gone out of vogue in recent years. Arguably, current government policy on health and sustainable development is offering the whole public health arena the most positive opportunities for improvement in decades.

While this can hardly be described as “revolutionary”, it has radically refocused health policy to a local community level – introducing robust partnership arrangements between a whole range of stakeholders.

As all members are probably aware, the CIEH and Health Development Agency have been working together to develop a strategic vision for the environmental health profession’s contribution to “health development and wellbeing”, which resulted in the publication of a report entitled Environmental Health 2012 – a key partner in delivering the public health agenda. This issue of EHJ looks for inspiration to the work that the CIEH and HDA have been jointly undertaking , and focuses on some of the main issues tied up in the sustainable development and health agenda.

Over 150 years ago, Victorian Britain was characterised by the pervasive threat of mass epidemics due to rapid and successful urbanisation, sprawling slum housing and poor sanitation. Campaigning by some forward-thinking civic leaders led to the appointment of the first city medical officer and the first Public Health Act.

Ian MacArthur, chief executive of the UK Public Health Association, puts the beginnings of the public health movement into historical context and argues that the difficult issues faced by these pioneers in the 19th century are equally relevant today. Is it finally time that prevention is put ahead of cure by all of society?

Bringing the debate to the environmental health profession’s doorstep is Ian Gray who, says that environmental health needs a new goal to take its services forward and enable practitioners to improve their role in public health improvement. Just how this is to be done is currently under debate, and the CIEH and HDA would welcome your views.

Still on the theme of sustainable development and its links to health, Brian Hanna talks to EHJ. I caught up with him in Belfast late last year, where he asserted that community strategies are the way forward if sustainability and health inequalities are to be met. His views on the subject make inspiring reading for all professionals in the environmental and public health field.

Then, Dominic Harrison, an associate director of the HDA, puts forward a fascinating argument that the NHS as an entity is unnecessarily degrading the environment, wasting money and perhaps ultimately risking lives by failing to incorporate sustainable development principles into its planning and performance management. He argues that the failure to connect and integrate NHS sustainability targets within the performance management of health outcomes of NHS investment is a massive wasted opportunity.

Finally, Jeanette Longfield of the umbrella group Sustain is well known to many of our readers as a tireless campaigner for local sustainability projects. She puts forward a powerful argument for engaging in local health and sustainability initiatives. When it comes to sustainable living and improved health, who can argue with the good sense in that?