The Pandemic Years - Director of Public Health launches ambitious Annual Report

Sharon Stoltz, City of York’s Director of Public Health has published her statutory Annual Report which was presented to the City Council’s Executive on Thursday, 6 October 2022

The report focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on York, from the date the UK’s first case was identified in York through to the present, and places that within a broader historical framework, and lessons from epidemics in history including Cholera, Bubonic Plague and the Spanish Flu.

Ms Stoltz said, “I remember vividly the phone call our team received from Public Health England on the 30 January 2020 informing us that the first UK COVID-19 cases had been identified in York.

“From that moment on everyone involved offered blood, toil, tears and sweat, going above and beyond in their service to our city in one of its darkest moments. In York we had to deal with it first, acting as a Wayfinder for the rest of the UK in terms of the public health, partnership and communications responses.

“Playing that pivotal role in city life is not novel for Public Health, and whether through the slum clearances of the early 1900s, improving air pollution in the 1950s, rolling out polio inoculation in the 1960s, tackling the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 90s, Public Health’s work and public health issues are never far away from the news. 

“In fact, an Annual Report has been produced by a Chief Medical Officer for Health in York for over a century. This one provides the right opportunity to not only express my condolences and sympathies to all those whose lives were affected over the pandemic years, but also to put those events and challenges into context and ensure our learning for the future”.

Directors of Public Health have a statutory requirement to write an annual report on the health of their population. 

The Director of Public Health Annual Report is a vehicle for informing local people about the health of their community, as well as providing necessary information for decision-makers in local health services and authorities on health gaps and priorities that need to be addressed.

The Pandemic Years report reaches over the whole period since the first COVID case was identified through four broad chapters which, as well as telling the story of COVID-19, interweave the past and present, and reflect on the story of the recent pandemic using historical narratives as a counterpoint. 

The report follows a structure through the phases of any infectious disease or outbreak:

• the spread, or the story of a pandemic's beginning
• the impact, or the story of what effect a disease has on a population
• the voices, or the story of the lived experience of a pandemic
• the control, or the story of how an outbreak starts to end

Cllr Carol Runciman, Executive Member for Adult Social Care & Public Health, said, “Nobody is unaware of the huge challenge that COVID represented to the City and far beyond.

“This fascinating report outlines the incredible response of the Director of Public Health and her team, but also of those across public services and a wide range of key worker roles, as well as the huge sacrifices and contributions made by all in our communities. 

“To see all of that - as we do in this report - against the historic framework of similar challenges and previous responses, is both humbling and inspiring and points the way to the future. My grateful thanks go to Sharon, her team and many others for the immense amount of work done to get us to this point”

The Director of Public Health's report, 'York; the Pandemic Years' is available at https://www.york.gov.uk/downloads/file/1158/director-of-public-health-s-annual-report-2020-to-2022