Table Of Contenti
Essentials for Health Protection
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Essentials for Health
Protection
Four key components
Emily Ying Yang Chan
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To my family, Eric, Ellie, Ernest, and Einstein, for their love and support
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Contents
Foreword by Professor Eng-kiong Yeoh ix
Foreword by Professor Christopher P. Conlon xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Case Contributors xv
About the Author xix
1 Introduction 1
2 Core Principles of Public Health in Health Protection Practices 5
3 Climate Change and Health 21
4 Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response 63
5 Communicable Disease and Control 93
6 Environmental Health 124
7 Planetary Health and Sustainability 184
8 Challenges and Opportunities of Health Protection in the
Twenty- First Century 205
9 Health Protection and Health Risks in a Changing World 239
Index 241
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Foreword
Health protection is one of the three key domains of public health, together with health
improvement and health services. It covers a long- established set of functions to protect
individuals, groups, and populations from various hazards. In Hong Kong, the Centre for
Health Protection was established under the Department of Health of the Government
of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2004 to strengthen the capacity of
Hong Kong’s public health system to deal with various public health challenges. In add-
ition to infectious disease control tracing back to John Snow’s classic cholera outbreak
study and environmental health exemplified in the UK Clean Air Acts of the 1950s, health
protection has increasingly expanded into new grounds, covering new hazards. One of
the new attempts to delineate the health protection practice is the document ‘Health
Protection Policy Toolkit: Health System Strengthening for Health Security’, compiled by
the Commonwealth Secretariat and Public Health Wales in 2016 for the Commonwealth
Health Ministers Meeting, which was later updated as the ‘Health Protection Policy
Toolkit: Health as an Essential Component of Global Security’ in 2017. Based on the
Systems Framework for Healthy Policy as a suggested way for 53 Commonwealth member
countries to coordinate and organize their health protection services, the toolkit aims to
provide a comprehensive and practical resource for policy-m akers to strengthen regional,
national, and global health protection as part of an overall health system. It defines health
protection as encompassing activities that ensure robust health security at local, national,
and global levels, which cover four major components: communicable disease control,
emergency preparedness and response, environmental health, and climate change and
sustainability. The document argues that health protection services can prevent and
manage disease outbreaks associated with pathogens and environmental hazard expos-
ures, as well as increase resilience in coping with other emergencies and extreme climate
change events.
Based on this framework and her expertise and experience in global health and hu-
manitarian medicine and with the full support of The Chinese University of Hong Kong
(CUHK) Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care (JCSPHPC), Professor
Emily Chan has addressed the key aspects in the four essential health protection compo-
nents in this book. This is a very welcome effort. I believe that this book will help bring
health protection practice and research up to date by revisiting classical and re-e merging
infectious disease and environmental hazards and presenting new and emerging health
hazards from climate change and more frequent natural and human- caused disasters and
emergencies that are receiving increased attention from the Centre for Health Protection
here in Hong Kong to the World Health Organization globally. Recent repeated outbreaks
and extreme events in various parts of the world have reminded us the inadequacies of
