Programme

COVID-19: Cultural Signals, Metaphors, Exit, Climate Justice, Social Justice - Dominic Harrison, Director of Public Health, Blackburn with Darwen
Dominic will discuss insights from experience relating to how COVID-19 may change culture, the metaphors we use to manage and understand the future, and how these insights might help improve global climate and social justice policy. 

Reflections on Responding to and Building Back Better from COVID-19 in Calderdale and Dudley: The Need for Local Flexibility and National Support - Debs Harkins, Director of Public Health, Calderdale 

Deborah will contrast her experiences in Dudley (affected early, with cases in hospital and a very high mortality rate) with her experiences in Calderdale, affected less and later. She will also highlight implications for inequalities, particularly the tension between a national top-down approach to tackling the pandemic and local flexibility to ensure that action is delivered in ways that meet the needs of local communities. 

What will be the New Normal? ‘Protect the NHS, Build Back Better’; or ‘Stay Alert and Get COVID Done’ - Stephen Morton, Public Health Consultant, Public Health England

This presentation will consider both national and international challenges in COVID-19 response and recovery. Stephen will talk about the UK’s COVID-19 pandemic management and give a personal view on some of the challenges, the things that have gone well (and there are some) and the areas in which we have struggled. He will describe some of the differences between European countries and the difficulties in explaining these differences at this stage in the pandemic. Finally, he will look at the issues we will face in longer-term recovery and social reconstruction, both in the UK and globally, and some of the opportunities as well as the risks after COVID-19.