What is Public Health, anyway?

Posted by: Dominique D.

So, if you've read my other blogs, you know that I am a Public Health Studies Major...and it's probably one of those terms that sounds like you might know what it means, but upon further pondering you realize you don't know, at least not fully. At least, that's how it was for me, even after I decided it would be my major. Odd but probably not too uncommon.

So since I think my Intro to Public Health class has some awesome and very useful information, I'll talk about it a bit and hopefully those of you who feel you who don't want to be a 'hard science' (bio, chem, neuroscience, etc) major, or on the opposite side, a full out humanities/social sciences major, can see what it's all about.

And I also recommend checking out Jessica K.'s blog from last year about Public Health vs Medicine, entitled  "From Laughing to Applauding" about how different yet connected these two fields are. 

On the first day of class, we learned that public health was about preventing and controlling disease, as well as promoting health and improving the quality of life in a population. At first glance, this seems like "duhhhhh"  but in actuality public health is not guaranteed in every country to every citizen. What kinds of countries? Um, take the U.S. for instance. Nowhere in our Constitution is health explicitly guaranteed for every citizen, whereas countries like South Africa and Japan have public health parameters listed in their constitutions. No wonder the U.S. is ranked 37 out of 50 on a list of healthcare for industrialized countries.     

Not to mention, not as much attention is paid to public health as it is with let's say, medicine. Why?

For one, it is hard to measure the achievements of public health right way. For instance, when research is done for a new drug, and it is tested in a study and found to be useful, it gets recognition beyond belief and a ton of coverage. But with public health, measuring prevention is kind of hard, especially because no one thinks about a disease or a problem if it's not present. 

All of the abstinence/safe sex campaigns, campaigns to end smoking, alcoholism, wearing helmets, drinking milk and eating vegetables, anti-violence campaigns...these are all public health strategies to prevent diseases and to promote health among people...and I feel we take them for granted sometimes because we expect to be healthy and we expect to have clean water and food that is inspected and the right to be treated at a hospital when we need emergency care.

 

Have you ever thought about what life would be like if we could not expect these things? Hmm, let that one simmer.

Only 1% of national spending on healthcare is spent on public health resources. For those of you who love politics, you are in luck, because public health is SO SO embedded into politics...after all, nothing can be done without the government right? One of the controversies has to do with the question of government intervention in the lives of individuals for the sake of the population. Like, is it fair to smokers for the government to limit smoking almost everywhere? What about when governmental industries put money making over the health of the population? This is why tobacco industries have fought public health campaigns for so long. Maybe you've seen "Beef-It's what's for dinner" slogan. But have you ever seen one of those for broccoli or spinach? Hmm....

For those of you who kinda like math, namely statistics, there is a ton of that within the field of public health since so much time is spent collecting and analyzing data from populations, assessing sickness and health, and mortality rates.

For those who like science, public health does utilize the biomedical sciences for research and prevention of disease--for example, vaccines are a good way to see how public health and medicine are connected. Vaccines are a preventative strategy that helps prevent disease in populations, but are developed within the biomedical lab. Also, environmental sciences are also soooooooo important because the environment indeed has an effect on health [think air, water pollution, lack of fresh food....]. Social sciences are needed because people's behavior surely affects their health, because while things like the environment and genetics impact health, so do things like stress and mental and emotional health.

Last class, we talked about obesity as an epidemic [did you know 70% of Americans are overweight, and 1/3 of Americans are obese??] We had to think of some biological, social, cultural, clinical, and political reasons as to why this may be. This field is one that is broad, relevant and far-reaching...and I hope my entry gave you some insight! =]

Pics courtesy of Google!