Public health is the practice of preventing disease and injury across populations or societies, including communities, groups or societies as a whole. This encompasses activities like encouraging healthy lifestyle choices, controlling disease outbreaks and monitoring environmental hazards in homes, workplaces and communities as well as assuring high-quality personal healthcare services and responding to emergencies. As opposed to clinical professionals such as doctors or nurses who treat individuals after they become sick or injured, those practicing public health instead focus on prevention through education, recommendations, policy development advocacy research.
As a rule, more involvement in public health is generally beneficial – whether that be national health agencies such as CDC and WHO or local departments of public health such as schools and municipalities.
Public health studies and practices involve multiple disciplines, including medicine, biology, social sciences, epidemiology, anthropology, economics, management science and statistics. Together these fields give public health practitioners a rounded perspective of all factors affecting its spread or impact of illness.
Epidemiology and biostatistics offer physicians a solid grounding in quantitative disciplines like interpretation of medical literature and application to individual patients, making their work much simpler. A well-versed physician in these subjects can also understand how interactions among medical care, public health initiatives and government regulations impact overall wellness for each individual patient.
Basic elements of any nation’s public health system are represented by federal, state and local health departments; their programs align closely with educational institutions, environment and natural resource agencies, transportation authorities, housing and urban planning departments, agricultural agencies, forestry conservation groups as well as mental health facilities that specialize in drug treatment services.
While most states offer similar public health programs, there can be significant variations between states when it comes to services provided and programs tailored specifically to their state’s issues.
Beyond traditional agencies, there are also advocacy and interest groups which work to promote public health on a local level. These can range from groups comprised of just neighbors to larger bodies such as cities, counties or states. These groups specialize in information exchange, coalition building and lobbying; others serve as catalysts for starting new programs – examples being Dissatisfied Parents Together, National Association of Retarded Citizens, Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Some of these groups also provide direct health care services directly to individuals, including needle exchange programs for those living with HIV/AIDS or hepatitis. Furthermore, these organizations can serve as sources of direct funding for various public health initiatives in developing nations with inadequate infrastructure; providing direct funding directly to those most in need.