Why HPOAA
The concept for HPOAA started in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak when many of us realised there was a need for sharing insights and advocacy to fight the coronavirus outbreak in Australia and globally.
The rapid formation of HPOAA in March allowed the invitation to WHO expert Bruce Aylward to advise 60 health protection staff from across Australia on how to respond to COVID in our inaugural webinar. This website was launched in late August 2020 to kick off more webinars and a forum to share learnings and resources. There are parallels in the USA in organisations such as the National Association of of County and City Health Officials (https://www.naccho.org/) and Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (https://www.astho.org/default.aspx)
Who Can Join?
A health protection officer describes any professional working in a government health agency at the local, state or national level providing communicable disease or environmental health services. It includes epidemiologists, public health physicians, nurses, and a wide range of disciplines.
You MUST have a state, regional or the Commonwealth Department of Health email address to join AHPOA. This signifies that you are 1) employed or trusted to work with a jurisdictional health department, and 2) you have signed a confidentiality agreement with a health department. This does not mean you should ever post any confidential jurisdictional information to this site. Please ensure you follow your departments policies. The requirement to have a government email is to give AHPOA members some assurance that draft resources and initial learnings can be shared within a controlled non-public environment.
While we are organising ourselves, the curator of the association is Craig Dalton, contact him at [email protected] if you would like to join or contribute or offer assistance. There are representatives from almost all jurisdictions who have agreed to support the onward development of the association.