Visions of the Future

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) is the voice of the environmental health profession.

CIEH members work around the world, improving lives and policing standards across all areas of environmental health, including food, housing, health and safety, and environmental protection. Founded in 1883, the CIEH has been instrumental in developing many environmental standards that contribute to the improvement of public health and wellbeing globally.

While we all hoped we’d see the back of the pandemic in 2021, this was especially true for environmental health professionals.

They had been on the frontline since March 2020. While 2021 brought the end of lockdowns, vaccine rollouts, and the return of travel, constantly changing ‘government advice’ brought a whole new set of challenges for the environmental health industry.

In mid 2021, a report examining the UK’s initial response to the pandemic was published, concluding that the approach to the pandemic in the early weeks ranked as “one of the most important health failures the UK has ever experienced.” This was not the news the environmental health sector wanted to hear. As an industry created to ensure public safety, they had worked tirelessly on the frontline during the pandemic. It was imperative their member magazine, Environmental Health News (EHN), recognised this work.

We worked with the CIEH to come up with a way to highlight EHP’s work in a meaningful way. We decided to encourage industry experts to share their experiences and offer recommendations for the future. What could we learn from an unprecedented 18 months? What did it mean for the profession and the wider world?

What resulted was a high-impact Visions of the Future campaign, designed to exemplify the work of EHPs and share learnings for future public health crises.

Our campaign centred around the November issue of EHN.

We ripped up the flat-plan to create a special edition that doubled as a white paper for the policy team to repurpose. It had a clear identity, with illustrated headshots and colour-coded environmental health specialisms.

We also built a hub on the CIEH website, launching with 60% of content uploaded. We drip fed the remaining content over the next month, featuring it in the popular EHN Extra newsletter to drive traffic. The two newsletters were sent to 7,300 members and secured solid open rates of 29.5% and 31.9% respectively, and 18% click-to-open rates. 

Visions of the Future was supported by a month-long social campaign, #FutureofEH, spanning Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, with daily posts encouraging member involvement. The campaign featured thought leadership pieces and Q&As with 10 relevant experts, coupled with case studies from the frontline and members’ experiences.

 Overall, the message throughout the campaign echoed that the role of EHPs is more important than ever. They must continue to share their expertise with the government and be the agile, forward-thinking backbone of the wider world.