Through the glass ceiling-and back again: The experiences of two of the first non-medical directors of public health in England

In 2001, the English Department of Health announced a radical re-organisation of the NHS under the banner of 'shifting the balance of power'. As part of this re-organisation health authorities were abolished and the main NHS public health responsibilities devolved to the new primary care trusts (PCTs) from April 2002. Following several years of campaigning by the Multidisciplinary Public Health Forum (MPHF), in November 2001 the Acting Minister for Public Health, Lord Hunt, announced that PCT director of public health (DPH) posts would be open to 'suitably qualified' candidates from any discipline. From April 2002 a number of new DsPH from backgrounds other than medicine were appointed. This paper reports on the experiences of two such DsPH who shared a commitment to multidisciplinary public health, but who did not wholly share the objectives of the MPHF. We place the opening of PCT DPH posts in the context of tensions within NHS public health between a focus on health services versus the wider determinants of health, and the development of multidisciplinary public health. The paper reflects on both the degree of change this opening represented and the limitations and tensions such appointments exposed. © 2007 The Royal Institute of Public Health