As the professional membership body representing a proudly multi-disciplinary specialty, the Faculty of Public Health strongly supports opening the availability of NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship (ACF) posts to all public health specialty registrars (SpRs) regardless of professional background.
The change reduces unfair differences in training for public health SpRs, giving registrars from multi-professional backgrounds the same access to ACF posts that those from a medical background enjoy.
Whether entering public health specialty training from a medical or multi-disciplinary background, during the programme all registrars have equivalent roles, duties, and training needs; and upon completion of the programme they are equally qualified to practice at consultant level, working side by side and in many situations, to the same job specification. It is therefore right that they are afforded the same opportunities throughout their programme of training, including pursuing a career in academic public health. Additionally, widening the pool of candidates is likely to bring a diversity of candidates into academic public health.
We would welcome the evaluation and publication of recruitment outcomes, including the professional backgrounds of applicants. Considering that there are relatively few public health ACF posts, the Faculty expects that the overall impact on the availability of ACFs on the medical workforce will be small.
