Behind the scenes, across the Vancouver Coastal Health, environmental health officers are working quietly, inspecting restaurants, schools and any place you’ll find the public. Unless it’s a closure or a report of contaminated water, you rarely hear about what they do. But this September, from the 22nd to the 26th, these professionals are being recognized for their work with Environmental Public Health Week, a special time to celebrate the many contributions of public health professionals in the protection and promotion of health.

Len Clarkson a drinking water specialist says it is nice to be recognized for doing something positive.

“In health protection, the challenge we have is demonstrating the value of our work by how many people didn’t get sick and that can be difficult,” he says. “So it’s nice for it to be acknowledged like this. We’re not as sexy and high-profile as the acute side of health care, like hospitals and ambulances and the prevention side tends to get overlooked.”

Drinking water specialist Len Clarkson in Squamish.

For more than 20 years, Len has worked in Environmental Health in Squamish, making sure that drinking water in the area is safe for consumption.

“Even before it became a big issue, I’ve always been interested in drinking water and have migrated towards it because it affects everyone,” he says. “When I started, not a lot of attention was paid towards drinking water so I’ve kind of grown up with the area as it developed. There wasn’t much being done back in the early days.”

There are currently at least 65 environmental health officers throughout the authority. Virginia Jorgensen, an environmental health officer in Vancouver says she loves the work because it is so varied.

“It can include routine inspections of public facilities, communicable disease investigations, which I’m involved in daily; water, food and air sampling, community meetings, educational events, court appearances, supervision and management of programs. Much of the work we do usually goes unseen. Effective public health interventions often go unnoticed.  Once a year, we celebrate the many contributions of environmental public health professionals in protecting and promoting health.”

The next 100 years

Every year the Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors designates a week in September to celebrate the many contributions of environmental Public Health professionals in the protection and promotion of health in communities and the importance of environmental public health programs within our health care system.  The theme this year is “The Next 100 Years:  Reaching new height in health protection” (the profession has been in existence for 100 years).

“We are thrilled that the City of Vancouver has declared this week as  Environmental Public Health Week,” Virginia says. “The municipalities of Richmond and North Vancouver have also declared this Environmental Public Health Week.”

Proud of the work

Thinking about Environmental Public Health Week, Len says he’s proud of the track record for drinking water in the province and VCH, in particular.

“We’ve had a long history of boil-water notices where the water isn’t safe and that’s really avoided outbreaks,” he says. “Most of our current boil water notices are on ultra-small systems in remote locations.”

“As I said, it’s not until something bad happens does our work get attention so this is nice.”