Evolution and Approach to Public Health

• Public Health is the science and art of preventing diseases, prolonging life, and promoting health through organized community effort.
• It combines sciences, skills, and beliefs to maintain and improve the health of all people.

The Evolution of Public Health

• Public health evolved through trial and error, incorporating expanding scientific medical knowledge.
• Advancements were often spurred by war and natural disasters.
• The need for organized health protection grew with urbanization and social reforms.
• Public health emerged from ancient civilizations that practiced hygiene, sanitation, and quarantine for religious and cultural reasons.
• New challenges arose with the global pandemics of the 20th and 21st centuries, requiring international cooperation and surveillance.
• Public health continues to evolve with issues like climate change, bioterrorism, health equity, and digital health.

Public Health Approach

• Public Health Model: Focuses on population, disease prevention, health promotion, interventions, environment, human behavior, and public (some private) aspects.
• Medical Model: Concentrates on the individual, diagnosis, treatment, intervention, medical care, and private (some public) aspects.

Major Disciplines in Public Health

• Nutrition is about the science of food, nutrients and other substances, their action, interaction and balance in relation to health and disease.
• Reproductive Health: A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being related to the reproductive system, its functions, and processes.
• Health Promotion: Achievement and maintenance of optimum health through health education, sanitary environment, socio-economic development, healthy lifestyles, and legislation.
• Environmental Health: Identifies and modifies biologic, chemical, social and physical factors that represent hazards to health to protect people from harmful exposures.
• Health Education: A combination of learning experiences designed to facilitate voluntary actions conducive to health and is an essential part of health promotion.
• Epidemiology: Studies the frequency, distribution, and determinants of diseases and other health-related events in specified populations.
• Health Economics: Deals with the uses of resources in the health services sector and with the efficient utilization of economic resources such as manpower, material and financial resources.
• Biostatistics: The application of statistics to biological and medical problems; application of statistics especially to medical problems, but its real meaning is broader.
• Health Service Management: Involves people working together to make efficient use of resources in order to achieve objectives.
• Ecology: Studies the relationship among living organisms and their environment.
• Research: Involves action to acquire deeper knowledge or new facts about scientific or technical subjects.
• Demography is the study of population, especially with reference to size and density, fertility, mortality, growth, age distribution, migration, and the interaction of all those with social and economic conditions.

Key Terms

• Epidemiology: Science of the frequency, distribution, and determinants of disease among specific populations.
• Iceberg of Diseases: In many health problems, large numbers of cases are undiscovered or misdiagnosed.
• Correctly diagnosed cases represent only "the tip of the iceberg" in the community.
• The real load of illness lies hidden in the community and is not clinically apparent.
• This phenomenon is illustrated by a pyramid of disease.
• This presents the risk that persons with in-apparent or undiagnosed infections may transmit infection to others e.g. TB, Polio, AIDS.
• Health Equity: The state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health.

Core Functions & Essential Services

• Core functions are fundamental to achieving the goals of public health and are referred to as the essential public health functions (EPHF).
• Core functions include assessment, policy development, and assurance.
• Assessment Involves the collection and analysis of information regarding health problems.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #1: Assess and monitor population health status, factors that influence health, and community needs and assets.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #2: Investigate, diagnose, and address health problems and hazards affecting the population.
• Policy Development Involves the process of information sharing, consulting, and citizen participation to decide on public health measures.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #3: Communicate effectively to inform and educate people about health, factors that influence it, and how to improve it.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #4: Strengthen, support, and mobilize communities and partnerships to improve health.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #5: Create, champion, and implement policies, plans, and laws that impact health.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #6: Utilize legal and regulatory actions designed to improve and protect the public's health.
• Assurance involves active pushes to ensure communities are healthy and protected.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #7: Assure an effective system that enables equitable access to the individual services and care needed to be healthy.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #8: Build and support a diverse and skilled public health workforce.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #9: Improve and innovate public health functions through ongoing evaluation, research, and continuous quality improvement.
• ESSENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE #10: Build and maintain a strong organizational infrastructure for public health.

Tools of Public Health Assessment

• Birth rates
• Fertility Indices
• Morbidity indices
• Incidence Rate: (Number of new events in a specified period / Number of persons exposed to risk during this period) × 10^n
• Prevalence rate: Number of people with the disease or condition at a specified time (old+ new cases) / Total Number of examined population in the same locality and time
• Life expectancy
• Mortality Indices

Applied Activities in Public Health

• Prevents epidemics and the spread of disease
• Protects against environmental hazards
• Responds to disasters and assists communities in recovery
• Prevents injuries
• Promotes healthy behaviors
• Assures the quality, accessibility, and accountability of health services.
• Monitoring the health status of the population
• Mobilizing community action
• Reaching out to link high-risk and hard-to-reach people to needed services
• Researching to develop new insights and innovative solutions
• Leading the development of sound health policy and planning

Ten Great Public Health Achievements

• Vaccination
• Motor-vehicle safety
• Safer workplaces
• Control of infectious diseases
• Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke
• Safer and healthier foods
• Healthier mothers and babies
• Family planning
• Fluoridation of drinking water
• Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard (CDC, 1999)

Top 10 Public Health Trends in 2023

• Public Health AI
• Public Health Informatics
• Telemedicine
• Mobile Health
• Immersive Technologies
• Robotics
• Vaccine Development
• Surgery & Public Health
• Genomics
• Precision Medicine

Explore the science of preventing diseases and promoting health through organized community efforts. Learn about the history and evolution of public health and its transformation through trial and error to incorporate scientific medical knowledge.