This project's final report and evaluation was completed on 17 December 2021

Project report

This project identified the roles and responsibilities of local government Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It found that the SA environmental health workforce was used to varying degrees and varying roles by local government, although notably, half the workforce believe they could have been better utilised, and the other half believed they were well utilised. The most common roles included education, and communication (both internally and externally) as well as monitoring and reporting compliance with directions.

The SA Local Government Functional Support Group was praised by the environmental health workforce. It was successful in communicating directions in a timely fashion and should be included in future emergency management/pandemic plans.

A workforce review was also conducted and identified a current dilemma facing the SA local government environmental health profession. Emerging environmental health issues associated with climate change were perceived as the most significant future challenge facing the profession. However, participants believe that a lack of adequate resourcing, leading to workforce shortages, increasing workloads and a lack of support are negatively impacting the professions preparedness to deal with these emerging issues. It was suggested that the resourcing issues were caused by current challenges around the misperception of environmental health. The recognition of the importance of environmental health varied largely between councils. Future research should be conducted to identify what some councils are doing well to raise the profile of the profession to ensure adequate resourcing.

Project achievements

This project has achieved all intended milestones. The final report includes identification of current and predicted future local government environmental health workforce requirements and issues, recommendations around addressing workforce issues and sustainability, recommendations around future training and educational needs of local government EHOs to ensure capacity to implement future pandemic plans and meet public health regulatory and risk-based responsibilities. The roles and responsibilities of local government EHOs in the response to COVID-19 were identified as well as what worked well and what didn't. Recommendations have been provided on how these lessons can be incorporated into future best practice local government pandemic response plans.

Project distribution

The final report has been disseminated to LGA members via Belinda Caruana, Senior Policy Officer Public Health and will be uploaded to the LG R&D library for members to access. In addition, the report was shared with Environmental Health Australia (EHA) SA Branch members and the manager's forum and will also be uploaded to their member's website. The findings were also presented at the EHA (SA) 2021 Conference.

Project evaluation

Feedback on survey questions, interview questions and this draft report was sought from our external and internal partners and enabled evaluation of the research process and findings. Evaluation of data interpretation and findings was provided through internal and external review.