Public Health

Recently, i started a course online and am currently studying the principles of public health. Thus i decided to write todays post on Public health and on the amazing enthusiasm and passion of my teacher, Dr Bic, who really brings the subject to life.

Firstly what is Health? Health is the state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not just the absence of disease. This dynamic state needs to be promoted with good habits so as to lower risk of disease. The 7 dimensions of public health (according to Dr Bic) are emotional, intellectual, spiritual, occupational, social, physical and environmental health.

So what does all this mean for Public Health? Public Health is a way to improve the quality of life my preventing disease and promoting good health through the three common functions of health; assessment, policy development and assurance. Public health is often regarded as a community health with new policies and interventions to reach the goal of preventing health, compared with medical care that deals with individual patients and hopes to find a cure for a particular disease.

The common disciplines of public health include; epidemiology, the control of infections diseases, their causes and ways to limit exposure to these factors, statistics, to view the benefits and risks of a particular course of treatment or intervention. It also incorporates biomedical sciences dealing with infectious diseases and pathogens along with the role of genetics in these diseases and chronic diseases. Environmental health science, on the other hand, deals with the health effects from the environment around us, such as the water and air quality. Social and behavioural sciences deals with factors and theories, and finally health policy and management deals with ageing lifestyle modification and trying to improve life expectancy, from the typical (premature due to diseases) and the ideal (thanks to a good diet and immune system).

And finally what does public health do? Public health tries to identify the problem by looking at the chain of causation that follows a set path, from agent (what caused the disease) to host, which is then linked to the environment and the intervention to help with the problem. This is done in a four step process. Firstly the problem is defined and analyzed, followed by the investigation into the risk factors of this problem. This is led by the intervention, whereby tests and treatments are developed to improve and cure the problem, finally followed by monitoring the intervention to ensure it is indeed benefiting the society.