Concept

Public health

Overview

Public health is "the science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the determinants of health of a population and the threats it faces is the basis for public health. The public can be as small as a handful of people or as large as a village or an entire city; in the case of a pandemic it may encompass several continents. The concept of health takes into account physical, psychological, and social well-being, among other factors.

Public health is an interdisciplinary field. For example, epidemiology, biostatistics, social sciences and management of health services are all relevant. Other important sub-fields include environmental health, community health, behavioral health, health economics, public policy, mental health, health education, health politics, occupational safety, disability, oral health, gender issues in health, and sexual and reproductive health.

Public health, together with primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, is part of a country's overall healthcare system. Public health is implemented through the surveillance of cases and health indicators, and through the promotion of healthy behaviors. Common public health initiatives include promotion of hand-washing and breastfeeding, delivery of vaccinations, promoting ventilation and improved air quality both indoors and outdoors, suicide prevention, smoking cessation, obesity education, increasing healthcare accessibility and distribution of condoms to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

There is a significant disparity in access to health care and public health initiatives between developed countries and developing countries, as well as within developing countries. In developing countries, public health infrastructures are still forming. There may not be enough trained healthcare workers, monetary resources, or, in some cases, sufficient knowledge to provide even a basic level of medical care and disease prevention. A major public health concern in developing countries is poor maternal and child health, exacerbated by malnutrition and poverty and limited implementation of comprehensive public health policies. Developed nations are at greater risk of certain public health crises, including childhood obesity, although overweight populations in low- and middle-income countries are catching up.

From the beginnings of human civilization, communities promoted health and fought disease at the population level. In complex, pre-industrialized societies, interventions designed to reduce health risks could be the initiative of different stakeholders, such as army generals, the clergy or rulers. Great Britain became a leader in the development of public health initiatives, beginning in the 19th century, due to the fact that it was the first modern urban nation worldwide. The public health initiatives that began to emerge initially focused on sanitation (for example, the Liverpool and London sewerage systems), control of infectious diseases (including vaccination and quarantine) and an evolving infrastructure of various sciences, e.g. statistics, microbiology, epidemiology, sciences of engineering.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

1. A command to this effect is spoken of as having been given: thus much is said. But, what is not said is--whether to this same command any or what obedience was paid. Thus it is that, instead of an _effect_ which it seems desired that we should consider as being produced, what we see directly stated as being produced, is nothing more than a _command_--a command, by which, as by its cause, we are to suppose the effect…

   Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul, but Jesus

   States what Public health is; the author is tied to Public health in the knowledge graph.

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2. Why should the public and its officers, even if the latter are termed statesmen, be wiser and more effective? The prime condition of a democratically organized public is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist. In its absence, it would be the height of absurdity to try to tell what it would be like if it existed. But some of the conditions which must be fulfilled if it is to exist can be indicated…

   John Dewey, The public and its problems

   States what Public health is.

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3. All putrefying vegetable and animal substances give off gases decidedly injurious to health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably poison the atmosphere. The filth and stagnant pools of the working-people's quarters in the great cities have, therefore, the worst effect upon the public health, because they produce precisely those gases which engender disease; so, too, the exhalations from…

   Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892

   Names Public health.

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Philosophers who discussed Public health

• Amartya Sen
• Sven Ove Hansson

Related ideas

• Substance abuse
• Animal
• Galen
• Gender equality
• Hippocrates
• Philosophy
• Industrial Revolution
• Interdisciplinarity
• Public policy
• John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
• Smallpox
• Infrastructure
• London
• Harvard University
• Kenya
• Islamic world
• Bioethics
• Liberalism
• Social relation
• Management
• Eastern Mediterranean
• Doctor of Philosophy
• Order of the British Empire
• Visual perception

Opposing perspectives

• Political science
• Oxford University Press
• Epidemiology

Place in the tradition

Part of Academic publishing.

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