Public Health Microbiology (PHM) incorporates microbiology in the field of human health and disease alongside microbiology for:
- animals
- food
- water
- the environment
PHM also facilitates the monitoring of known and emerging threats and the evaluation of effective interventions, to ensure public health action and policy can be developed.
This requires laboratory scientists, epidemiologists, and clinicians to generate, integrate, analyse and communicate epidemic intelligence, as is summarised in the following diagram.
The Public Health Microbiology Strategy for Scotland outlines the key functions of PHM in Scotland as:
- monitoring, alert and response
- technical expertise
- clinical and scientific advice
- workforce development
- reference microbiology
- collaboration and research
Collaboration and co-ordination are critical for the development and delivery of the strategy and it will be necessary to bring together partners across Scotland and beyond to accurately define the challenges and to prioritise them, ensuring that we support the delivery of data for surveillance and provide comprehensive scientific expertise.
The team
Our PHM team includes:
- Cath Arnold, Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) Operational Lead
- Sandra Currie, Healthcare Scientist
- Matt Holden, WGS Adviser
- Fiona Fleming, Scottish Health Protection Network (SHPN) Programme Portfolio Manager
- Trish Kennedy, Service Manager
- Annette Little, Project Manager PHM
- Michael Lockhart, Clinical Lead for PHM, Consultant Medical Microbiologist
- Kirsty Mangin, Data Manager
- Victoria Niven, SHPN PSO
- Stefan Rooke, Genome Analyst
- Amy Ross, Data Officer
- Sharif Shaaban, Bioinformatician
- Dave Yirrell, Consultant Virologist
- Andy Young, Data Manager
Contact
The team can be contacted at is phs.phm_team@phs.scot