England’s chief medical officer has pledged to act on high levels of public health unemployment amid NHS cutbacks after being confronted in Birmingham.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, who is originally from the city, was put under pressure over lack of jobs at the Faculty of Public Health Annual Conference at the University of Birmingham this week.

Douglas Noble, a British Medical Association public health registrar, confronted the 61-year-old health leader saying: “A third of public health trainees who have finished training can’t find a post.

“That’s the rate of unemployment for that workforce. We appreciate you keeping us informed, but you also need to keep us in jobs.”

Dame Sally, who is the 16th chief medical officer for England, said: “I am aware at the numbers coming out and not finding jobs.

“I find that disturbing. There is research going on as it is unacceptable to train people as public health specialists and then waste tax payers money and their lives and not find jobs for them, so work is going on.

“I will take this up and see if I can twist relevant arms. I don’t promise I will get there but I will do my best.”

Her pledge came as she gave a sign of encouragement to academics that they will be more heavily involved under the new health reforms.

She said she was determined to bring scientific collaborations to the fore in changes to the public health service adding that £5 million a year would be invested in public health.

“My concern is that academics and public health have become separated,” the former director general of research and development and chief scientific adviser for the Department of Health said.

“I’m determined that while I am chief medical officer, we can bring these two together again to deliver better outcomes for people.

“We will bring practitioners closer to academics and find that academics want to join in much more than they are used to.

“Scientists need to be able to present the evidence and that I will stand by.”

Dame Sally also advised universities to follow in the footsteps of Oxford and Cambridge in “networking” to get more funding for research projects.

“People ask me why they don’t get as much money as Oxford and Cambridge, but the clever thing they do is to find a theme for research like metabolic medicine and then network for funding,” said Dame Sally.

“That’s how to get a bit more to go forward and I would support that.”

Public health involves improving access to health care, controlling infectious disease, and reducing environmental hazards, violence, substance abuse, and injury. Scientists have played a major part in public health concerns in recent years, particularly over the H1N1 flu pandemic, of which Birmingham was the first UK city to encounter a major outbreak at Welford School, in Handsworth, in May 2009.

Universities in the Midlands are making major contributions to public health. The University of Birmingham is a centre for research and has a sizeable portfolio of overseas projects. Researchers are involved in studies in obesity, metabolic syndromes and bladder cancer. Warwick Medical School runs the only Masters level module in the UK in collaboration with the UK National Screening Committee, to evaluate health screening.