The professional transformation of public health in Britain, 1970-2025
Examination of the professional transformation of public health in Britain, 1970 – 2025.
This presentation explores the professional transformation of public health in Britain between 1970 and 2025. Its target audience are students and staff interested in the history of public health, and its transformation, in the UK.
In 2021, 90% of local authority directors of public health in England came from backgrounds other than medicine. This situation would have been unthinkable in the first three quarters of the twentieth century, when a medical qualification was an essential requirement for UK local authority medical officers of health.
This presentation explores this unique professional transformation in three acts. First, the paper reviews developments in the UK profession of public health in the period of medical exclusivity from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.
Second the period of radical change from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s is described from the perspective of the author as a participant observer, who transitioned from a lower status non-medical professional role to become a director of public health.
Finally, the consolidation of the transformation in the period from the mid-2000s to the present day is considered based on both documentary sources and lived experience, and an analysis is suggested of a continuing legacy of tensions and inequalities within an occupation that is both a medical speciality and a multidisciplinary profession.
For more detail, see the recent article in Medical History 70(1): 184-202: Evans D. (2026) From medical officers of health to multidisciplinary public health specialists: a history of the professional transformation of public health in Britain, 1970-2025
Speaker
David Evans
David Evans is Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Public Health and Wellbeing at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. He has published on a variety of public health topics, with interests in public involvement in public health and in health services research, whilst always maintaining an interest in the history of public health. Since retirement, he has written on the history of UK sexual health services and is currently working on the history of public health in twentieth century Bristol.
David is on the board of the UK Public Health Register, is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and sits on its Workforce Committee.
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