Dr. Jenny Mack:

I will try to answer the question. I trained in public health in Northern Ireland and the system is very different. I am now a trainer for trainees in both jurisdictions. What that means is public health specialist trainees going through a series of training programmes in order to, at the end, have a consultant or specialist post. The systems are incredibly different so, in Northern Ireland it is only really in the past couple of years that we have followed the UK example of not needing to be from a medical background to enter public health specialist training and to be able to have a consultant position without having a medical background.

It is different here. People need to have a medical degree to be a public health consultant. As regards multidisciplinary public health, we have talked today about the breadth of public health. It is everything from alcohol and tobacco to the air we breathe and the climate around us and because of that we need to have skills from environmentalists, social policy, the economy-----