In the Spotlight: Dan Flecknoe

“Working in a local authority can be daunting, but it’s the right place for public health to be. It keeps us in touch with residents and ensures that we are truly serving the population.”

Meet Dan, a valued member of our Public Health team, who brought a wealth of experience when he joined the council in 2019…

Hi Dan! Can you tell us about your time at the council so far?

I’ve worked at the council for five years now, starting in September 2019, just pre-pandemic. My job title is Consultant in Public Health. It’s particularly interesting, or perhaps ironic, that part of my job role is covering Health Protection, which involves working to protect the residents of Buckinghamshire from infectious diseases and environmental hazards. So, to come into this job, my first consultant role, just a few months before the start of the pandemic was a real ‘in at the deep end’ kind of experience.

What was it like starting your role just before the pandemic?

It was a bit overwhelming, but there’s something comforting in dealing with a situation where everyone to some extent is in over their heads because there was no living memory of dealing with a public health challenge of that scale. So, at least I didn’t feel like I was the only one who was a bit out of their depth. I felt quite well-prepared for it in a strange way, because of my professional experience. There’s this thing that a lot of people experience, sometimes referred to as impostor syndrome. Especially when you get into a new job, there’s a lot of self-examination: ‘Can I do this? Am I good enough to do this? Do I know enough?’ We tend to lean in the direction of thinking: ‘I don’t know enough, I could be better, I’m not good enough for this, someone’s going to find me out, I’m an impostor.’ But I almost didn’t have time to indulge in that with COVID. I just had to crack on and do my best.

Can you tell us about your career journey before joining the council?

Most of my previous career was in A&E nursing. I did nurse training in the early 2000s and worked for about 10 years as an A&E nurse in Brighton and later in London. It was a very rewarding job, challenging and interesting. I feel like I got a lot out of it. It also gave me the opportunity to travel, which was something I valued a lot at the time. I did some expedition medicine in Southeast Asia and then got the opportunity to work for an aid organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders. In 2008, I went on my first mission with MSF, which was in Darfur, Sudan, where there had been a civil war and hundreds of thousands of people displaced.

I was working in and around some massive internally displaced persons camps. That was when I got interested in public health because it was a very different kind of work to what I was doing in a London A&E at the time. In a resource-poor setting, the focus is on preventative medicine: clean water, sanitation, vaccination, nutrition and antenatal care. Those are the basic human needs when people have nothing else, and it’s what gives you the biggest return on your investment in terms of improving their lives. In contrast, in a London A&E department, there’s rarely the time to do any prevention work. Much of the time we were dealing with health problems relating to alcohol, smoking, homelessness, violence and drug use. I felt like I wasn’t treating any of the causes, but just providing palliative care for social problems.

How did your experiences abroad shape your approach to public health?

Working in Darfur, and later in Iraq, gave me what I think is a really helpful outsider perspective on our culture, as well as our health and social care system. It definitely gave me the drive to get upstream of health problems, to try and find ways of preventing or reducing them. It also helped me to understand the importance of community engagement, and how we need as much as possible to co-produce public health interventions with the populations we are aiming to help.

What has been the most rewarding part of your job?

My job has changed quite a lot over the five years. Initially, it was all COVID all the time. Post-pandemic, I’ve been able to develop my skills in other areas like sexual health, children and young people, and maternity. The council, through the public health team, has a responsibility to commission sexual health services for Buckinghamshire residents. We also commission the healthy child programme, which includes health visitors and school nurses. We’ve been working on several pilot projects, including healthy school neighborhoods, where we look at the area around schools and see what we can do to improve the determinants of health in those areas. This includes looking at fast food outlets, public open spaces, community safety, and more. The aim is to improve the health of the pupils and their ability to learn and get the most out of their education.

How has your team supported you in your role?

The public health team is about 30 strong with a really diverse array of talents and specialties. We have behavioural science specialists, physical activity specialists, smoking cessation specialists, children’s health specialists and more. One of the best things about the team is that it’s a really supportive and friendly group of people. We have opportunities to collaborate and support each other through an informal mentorship program called the “Gardening Club” where we pair up people at different stages of their professional journey within the team. We also boost each other’s efforts to keep fit on a group chat and we have some great away days such as our recent visit to Lindengate, a charity that does wonderful mental health work by getting people out in nature.

Do you take part in anything outside of your job role, or have any interests?

I’m the vice chair of the Board of Governors for a local school. It’s nice to be involved in an organisation within the community that’s doing important work, especially in early years development. Outside of that, I try to maintain a good work-life balance by participating in activities like kickboxing with my daughter and playing music. During COVID, I participated in all-staff briefings to give public health updates, and I would often end the briefings with a song, which was voted on by the staff. It’s a strange thing to be known for professionally, but it’s a nice outlet.

Finally, what would you say to someone considering joining the council?

Working in a local authority can be daunting, but I believe it’s the best place for public health professionals to work. The balance of professional technical expertise plus a true connection to the public through our elected members is incredibly valuable. Although it’s not always easy, having democratic accountability is really important. It keeps us from being vulnerable to ivory tower elitism and ensures that we better understand and properly engage with the population we are serving.

Looking for a new role? Check our current council vacancies here: https://jobs.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/