- "Public health is 'the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals'."
This includes measures taken by governments to promote healthier lifestyles and prevent the spread of diseases, including vaccination programs, smoking bans, and drug regulations.
Epidemiology: Study of how diseases spread within a population and how they can be controlled or prevented.
Health systems: Study of how healthcare is organized and financed within a country or region, including the role of government, private sector, and non-profit organizations.
Health behavior: The study of factors that influence health-related behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity.
Health economics: The study of how healthcare resources are allocated, including the cost-effectiveness of different interventions.
Health promotion: The study of how to encourage healthy behaviors and prevent disease through education, policies and environmental changes.
Policy analysis: The study of how policies are developed, implemented, and evaluated within a political system.
Health inequalities: The study of how social, economic, and environmental factors influence disparities in health outcomes across populations.
Public health ethics: The study of the ethical principles and values that guide public health policy and practice.
Global health: The study of the health challenges and opportunities facing the world's population, including infectious diseases, environmental health, and health systems.
Health communication: The study of how to effectively communicate health information to the public, including health literacy and health campaigns.
Environmental health policies: These policies focus on maintaining clean air, water, and soil, and protecting people from environmental factors like toxins, pollutants, and hazardous waste.
Disease prevention policies: Such policies involve strategies that target preventing the spread of diseases from one person to another. This includes vaccination campaigns, measures to promote personal hygiene, and healthcare-seeking behaviour campaigns.
Community-based health policies: These policies involve the community directly in public health measures. This may include health education programs in schools, community outreach programs to educate residents of health risks (like substance abuse), and encouraging healthy behaviours within the community.
Food safety policies: This includes policies that regulate the safety of the food supply, from farming to production to distribution. This may cover food labelling regulations, safety inspections, and sanitation standards.
Healthcare access policies: These policies aim to ensure universal access to medical care, regardless of economic status, geographic location, or other factors. Such policies may include laws that mandate insurance coverage for all, funding for safety net institutions, and laws protecting patients' rights.
Infrastructure policies: These policies encompass measures that ensure the development of infrastructure essential for public health, such as water supply systems, public transport systems, and sanitary waste management systems.
Occupational safety and health policies: This involves safety measures in the workplace aimed at reducing risks to workers' safety, health, and wellbeing. This policy includes measures such as increased personal protective equipment, training, and safety inspections.
Mental health policies: These policies aim at promoting good mental health, preventing mental illness, improving access to treatment and support, and reducing the stigma that surrounds mental illness.
International health policies: These policies encompass national and international regulations, agreements and practices that regulate international trade of medicinal products, and prevent global spread of communicable diseases, like the World Health Organisation (WHO) policies.
- "Analyzing the determinants of health of a population and the threats it faces is the basis for public health."
- "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."
- "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 coupled with governments' reluctance in implementing public health policies."
- "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."