Dr Mariam Parwaiz
Centre stage in the Covid pandemic Elizabeth Brown | Senior Communications Advisor
O
ur public health medicine specialists used to be a somewhat hidden workforce, but Covid has changed all that. What does daily life look like?
An incident management team co-ordinates the service’s overall Covid response – a response that has been running, continuously, for almost two years.
With Auckland in the midst of the Delta outbreak, Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) is running akin to a military operation.
The public health medicine specialists work as clinical partners at the leadership level of that operation. Their role is a strategic one in which they
16 THE SPECIALIST | DECEMBER 2021
try to understand the outbreak as a whole, and then advise on where the immediate and future issues might be and plan the response. ARPHS specialist Mariam Parwaiz says the classic definition of public health is the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organised efforts of society.
