Oh what a tangled web ... :Building capacity for environmental health action in Australia

In the early years of the 21st century environmental health has to contend not only with the more 'traditional' and essentially localised environmental risks to human health. We now face the additional challenges posed by a range of 'modern' environmental health issues. These are characteristically more complex, more ubiquitous, and much less clearly defined than any we have previously encountered. They have been brought about through rapid industrial expansion, technological advances that have transformed our social structures and the emergence of a global economy that is now forging ahead in the face of ever-increasing socio-economic inequity. These are problems that are not amenable to traditional environmental health solutions. They call instead for new, innovative and integrative strategies based on cooperative and collaborative working partnerships. This thesis explores the question of what needs to be done to build capacity for such partnerships among environmental health stakeholders in Australia. The current situation is clarified through a critical review of the author?s professional career, the historical development of environmental health practice, the different knowledge constructs of four distinguishable stakeholder groups and the objectives and guiding principles of Australia's National Environmental Health Strategy. A case study of a federally funded collaborative environmental health project serves to highlight some of the inherent challenges of intersectoral partnership and community participation. The metaphor of the spider's web illustrates the imperative of such partnerships among stakeholder groups and across all geographical scales from the local to the global. Finally, the barriers to be overcome in building environmental health capacity are analysed through a force field analysis. The study concludes with an analysis of the constituents of action necessary to develop the partnering capabilities of the various stakeholders, to build supportive community and organisational infrastructures and to demonstrate the political will of government to support change