The public referred to in the term “public health” can be a handful of people, a whole village, or reach several continents, as is often the case in a pandemic. Health in this case is physical, mental and social well-being. According to the WHO, this is not just the absence of illness or disease. Public health is an interdisciplinary science. For example, epidemiology, biostatistics and medical services relate to this particular area of knowledge.
Environmental, social, behavioral, mental, sexual and reproductive health, as well as health economics, public policy, occupational safety and gender issues in the medical field are other important links in this multidisciplinary science.
Basic goals
Public health aims to improve the quality of life through the prevention and treatment of diseases. This is done by monitoring health indicators, as well as by promoting a healthy lifestyle. Common public health initiatives include promoting breastfeeding, delivering vaccines, preventing suicide, and distributing condoms to fight sexually transmitted diseases.
Modern practice
Modern practice in this area requires, first of all, the presence of multidisciplinary groups of workers and specialists in occupations related to health care. Such teams may include epidemiologists, biostatistists, medical assistants, nurses, midwives, or microbiologists. If circumstances so require, environmental experts or public health and health inspectors, bioethics and even veterinarians, as well as specialists in gender and sexual (reproductive) health can join them.
Issue
Access to health services and public health initiatives is a significant challenge in developing countries. The main problem is the lack of sanitary conditions for the life of the population. In these countries, public health infrastructures are only being formed.
The focus of this science is on the prevention of diseases, injuries and other health conditions, as well as their management by monitoring cases and promoting healthy behavior. Many diseases can be prevented with simple, affordable methods. For example, research has shown that a simple act of washing hands with soap and water can prevent the spread of many infectious diseases. Treating a disease or controlling a pathogen can be vital to prevent its spread in the region. Public health organizations, vaccination programs and condom distribution are examples of general preventive measures in this area. Measures such as these contribute significantly to public health and increased life expectancy.
Social role
Public health, medical professionals, and the development of medicine are all interconnected things that play a very important role in disease prevention efforts in all countries through local health systems and nongovernmental organizations. Nowadays, these issues are considered not only locally, but also internationally. The World Health Organization (WHO) is an international agency coordinating global action on this issue. Most countries have their own government agencies, such as ministries of health, designed to solve domestic problems in this area.
Ministry of Health
The United States Health Service (PHS), led by the United States General Surgeon, and the Atlanta-based Disease Control and Prevention Center, in addition to its national responsibilities, is involved in several international events. In Canada, the Public Health Agency is the national authority responsible for promoting healthy lifestyles, emergency preparedness and response to the threat of infectious and chronic diseases.
In India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare plays a similar role with relevant government agencies across the country. In every country in Europe, including Russia, there are also ministries dealing with public health issues that oversee public health departments at universities. This is one of the main tasks of such ministries in any country. After all, it depends on a competent policy how prestigious the specialty "public health" will be considered. Specialists working in this field are needed both for individual countries and for the whole world.
Social Program Funding
Most governments recognize the importance of programs to reduce morbidity, disability and the effects of aging, as well as physical and mental illness. However, public health usually receives significantly less public funding (when compared to medicine). Vaccination-driven social programs have been successful in promoting health, including the eradication of smallpox, a disease that humanity has suffered for millennia.
Epidemic control
Research in this area has led to the identification and prioritization of many of the challenges facing the world today, including HIV / AIDS, diabetes, tuberculosis, waterborne diseases, zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance, also known as drug resistance, was the main theme of World Health Day 2011. While prioritizing urgent public health and health issues is crucial, Laurie Garrett (an American journalist) argues that she (prioritizing) can have mixed consequences. For example, when foreign aid is channeled into the development of disease-specific programs, the importance of public health as a whole is ignored.
Diabetes and obesity
Unfortunately, social programs are not always effective. For example, WHO reports that at least 220 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes. The incidence of them is growing rapidly. Diabetes deaths are projected to double by 2030. In an editorial in June 2010 in the medical journal The Lancet, the authors pointed out that type 2 diabetes, a largely preventable disease, has reached epidemic levels, which is a humiliation of world medicine.
The risk of developing type 2 diabetes is closely linked to the growing problem of obesity. According to recent WHO estimates, as of June 2016, in 2014, approximately 1.9 billion adults were overweight in the world. Among children under 5 years old, this figure was 41 million. The United States is the leading country in this regard, as 30.6% of Americans are obese. Mexico follows the United States in second place (24.2% of obese people), and in the United Kingdom, 23% of them (third in the world).
Once considered a problem in high-income countries, it is now growing in low-income countries, especially in urban settings. Many public health programs are increasingly focusing on obesity to address the root causes of this condition by promoting healthy lifestyles and exercise.
Other Wellness Campaigns
Some programs and initiatives related to healthy lifestyle promotion and prevention can be controversial. One such example is programs aimed at preventing the transmission of HIV through campaigns to promote safe sex and the use of sterilized needles. Another example is tobacco control. Changing smoking behavior requires long-term strategies, as opposed to combating infectious diseases, which usually takes a shorter period to produce effects. Many countries have implemented major smoking reduction initiatives. They introduced an increase in taxes and smoking bans in some or all public places.
Proponents of this policy argue that smoking is one of the main causes of cancer. Therefore, governments are required to reduce mortality both by restricting second-hand (second-hand) smoking and by providing fewer opportunities for this addiction. Opponents say this undermines personal freedom and personal responsibility. They worry that the state may eventually eliminate even more civil liberties, motivating this with concern for the life of the population.
Infectious diseases have historically been the most important in health care, and noncommunicable diseases and the main risk factors associated with behavior have received less attention from the public and specialists.
Evolution and progress
Many health problems are associated with non-adaptive individual behavior. From the point of view of evolutionary psychology, excessive consumption of new harmful substances is associated with the activation of a developed distribution system of substances such as drugs, tobacco, alcohol, refined salt, fat and carbohydrates. New technologies, such as modern transport, cause a decrease in physical activity. Studies have shown that behavior changes more effectively, taking into account evolutionary motivations, and not just information about health effects.
Thus, the wider use of soap and handwashing to prevent diarrhea is much more effectively promoted if it is directly related to the feeling of disgust at the thought of unwashed hands, which is instilled in people from childhood. Aversion is a developed system that avoids contact with substances that spread infectious diseases. Examples may include films that show how fecal matter contaminates food. The marketing industry has long been known for using psychological technique, as a result of which an association of products with a high status and attractiveness is imposed on people. The same technique can be used to cause people to reject something bad, for example, eating unwashed fruits.
Departments of public health and public health exist in almost all major universities in every country in the world. This can also be considered a great achievement of progress, because the more specialists in this field, the more healthy the population will be.
Conclusion
To improve public health, one of the important strategies is to promote modern medicine and scientific neutrality. This will help stimulate health policy. A public health education policy cannot address only political or economic issues. Political issues can make government officials hide the real number of people affected by illness before the upcoming elections. Therefore, scientific neutrality in teaching public health and health (both of individual specialists and the population of entire countries) is crucial, since it can ensure that treatment needs are met, regardless of political and economic conditions.