Academic medicine: who is it for?: Public health faces similar difficulties to academic medicine

doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7487.362-a

BMJ 2005;330:362-363 (12 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7487.362-a

Letter

Academic medicine: who is it for?

Public health faces similar difficulties to academic medicine

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Much of the correspondence on the future of academicmedicine has focused on the clinical specialties.^1
2 Many ofthe problems are common to public health. The recent surveyby the Council of Heads of Medical Schools makes it clear thatpublic health medicine faces the most severe problems.³

The first is the overall changes in post since 2000: publichealth is the most negatively affected of all specialties witha loss of 32%. When this is put alongside the drop in pathology,a loss of 25%, this is particularly harmful for the future ofacademic health protection.

The second problem is changes by grade since 2000: a 20% lossof professors; a 22% loss of readers or senior lecturers; anda 59% loss of lecturers.

The third problem is that public health medicine has also lostmost in funding from outside sources.

These figures speak for themselves in . . . [Full text of this article]

Sian M Griffiths, senior clinical lecturer

Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LF sian.griffiths@dphpc.ox.ac.uk