My name is Kirsty Hill, I am a Public Health Specialist and I work in Health Protection.
How long have you been working for Devon County Council?
I’ve been working for the Devon County Council for a long time. I was in the Public Health team prior to us being moved across into the County Council in 2013.
What made you choose to work for Devon County Council?
I was transferred across, when we moved into the Council, but I moved to Devon to work in Public Health in Devon prior to that. Mainly, because of Devon as a place, I really like it. It’s a great place to live, I love being near the sea. It’s got really nice market towns, really nice cities and I had family in Somerset and Devon and that was what drew me down here.
Can you give an overview of your role?
I’m a Public Health Specialist and at the moment I’m leading around Health Protection. I work with partners across the system so, that would be the NHS, with Education colleagues, with Adult Social Care colleagues, with vaccination teams and particularly with UK Health Security Agency, managing around infectious diseases and outbreaks, and a lot of work around prevention. So, thinking about infection prevention, these are the things that we can do to stop people getting unwell before it actually happens.
How did you come to be in this role?
I’ve done various different roles in Public Health, always had quite an interest in infectious diseases, and during the pandemic there was a real opportunity to embrace that, and I was offered the opportunity to go and work for UKHSA on secondment. So, I went across to them and helped support with outbreak management there and as things sort of shifted, as the time went on, we took on more of that management as a local authority. I came back and I carried on that role, largely supporting Social Care and Education and workplaces, and from that my role evolved and we now do more of the prevention work around that, and that’s how I came to do it.
What’s your favourite part of what you do?
I really enjoy the outbreak control stuff. It’s not good when you get infectious diseases but the working with partners, working to support settings that are having to manage situations.hinking about things that they can do in the moment but also thinking, going forward, what can they do to prevent things happening again. Or, thinking about the messaging out to staff, so the communication stiff like that. And, I just really enjoy working in that kind of multi-agency group to kind of get things back on track and try to help things not happen again.
How have you progressed through your role?
I started off as a Public Health Intelligence Analyst, and did quite a lot of work around Health and Wellbeing side of things. So, Health Promotion and over the years I took on more senior roles around that and I worked on various needs assessments and I’ve worked around Sexual Health, Mental Health, Cardiovascular disease and all sorts. And then, I was fortunate enough to get a place to do a Masters in Public Health which enabled me to take on a more leadership roles. So, at that point I was able to shift and I started doing Health Promotion work and I’ve overseen our lifestyle service at various times. I’ve done work around Cardiovascular disease more generally, mental health and then children and young people services and then most recently around Health Protection.
What are the benefits of working for Devon County Council?
So, I think Devon County Council gives an amazing opportunity in terms of flexible working. So, even prior to the pandemic, when we all started working more from home, we had the opportunity to be working at home. We had laptops that enabled us to do that. Obviously, now things being online makes that a whole lot easier and we do a lot of our meetings online. It enables us to meet up with people across, what is an incredibly large county, it makes those kind of wider meetings really, really achievable which previously you would’ve spent a lot of time travelling. So, I think, in terms of the IT offer that we have that’s really positive. We’ve been really fortunate through Public Health and through our working with the NHS, we get really good opportunities around training. So, I was fortunate enough to do a masters that was funded by the NHS, around developing skills around Public Health and made really good connections with other people through that. So, training wise I think it’s really good, flexible working is really good, and I haven’t necessary made as much use of them but there are obviously, sort of, various benefits around. In fact, I have done the bike to work scheme, so, I have benefited from that and now have enabled me to travel more in a climate, friendly way.
What do you like about living and working in Devon?
I really like living in Devon. I think it’s an amazing County, there’s so much going on. It’s got amazing coastlines, it’s got two national parks. It’s really friendly but in a relatively, sort of, small and local way, so even our cities aren’t intimidating and big. I think they’re really accessible for everybody.