Understanding Public Health by Ed Gar

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What is public health?

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Public health refers to science and art meant to prevent diseases, improve health through organized community efforts, and educate individuals in personal hygiene and mechanisms within medical and nursing services (Birkhead et al., 2022).

▪The primary goal - assess, assure, and develop policies that sustain scientific knowledge and practices to guarantee the members of society's health.

▪ The health care providers are expected to meet the health needs of the people by practicing the right diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up, which are the aims of having the public health sector function (Birkhead et al., 2022).

What have we achieved?

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▪Vaccination

▪Workplace safety

▪Infectious disease control

▪Family planning

▪Declaration of smoking as a health hazard

▪Fluoridation of drinking water for safety

▪Motor vehicle safety emphasis

▪Infants and mothers’ health improvements

▪Reduction in stroke and heart disease mortality

▪Healthy and safer food intake rise ’

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These accomplishments are the standouts that demonstrate how public health has improved population health in our country(Martin, 2020). Everything pertaining to society and health is covered. More crucially, if preventive actions are taken as directed, public health helps to lower healthcare burdens including mortality and treatment costs.

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According to Sharfstein (2014), about a decade ago, researchers defined the term “population health” to mean the “health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group.” Their goal was to broaden the discussion of health policy in the United States beyond the “biomedical paradigm” and to encourage investigation into and policy development of the underlying causes of illness. As initially conceived, the term encompassed the impact of income inequality, educational differences, and unjust disparities. Since then, population health has come to mean many different things.

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Anderson, R. M., Heesterbeek, H., Klinkenberg, D., & Hollingsworth, T. D. (2020). How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic? The Lancet, 395(10228), 931–934. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30567-5

Deane, C., Parker, K., & Gramlich, J. (2021, March 5). A Year of U.S. Public Opinion on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/2021/03/05/a-year-of-u-s-public-opinion-on-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

Martin, J. (2020). Global institutions: the World Health Organization (WHO). Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 87(6), 484–484. https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.08.060814

SHARFSTEIN, J. M. (2014). The Strange Journey of Population Health. Milbank Quarterly, 92(4), 640–643. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12082