What Is Public Health?

Public health and its benefits to Missourians are not well understood by many. Some people associate public health with immunizations for children and inspection of restaurants. Others see public health as the dedicated “county nurse” visiting older people in their homes. But few realize the broad range of activities and responsibilities for which public health is accountable.

Actually, public health is a sophisticated science for identifying and dealing with real and potential health threats to the community. Public health's primary purposes are to improve the health of communities, to prevent disease from occurring, and to save lives. An effective public health system:

• assesses and promotes health and safety;

• prevents or minimizes the occurrence of diseases and injuries;

• plans, prepares, and responds to natural and manmade disasters;

• identifies barriers, and facilitates access to primary and preventive health care; and

• enforces public health laws and regulations.

Public health relies upon a diverse group of professionals including nurses, environmental health specialists, health educators, administrators, nutritionists, epidemiologists, physicians, and laboratory workers. Others, not usually thought of as public health workers, are also essential to public health work (for example soil scientists, attorneys, engineers, accountants, and computer program designers). Each of these individuals, with their own unique set of knowledge and skills, and the organizations that employ them, make up the public health system. Working as a system, public health is able to protect citizens from communicable diseases and other threats. Public health workers use surveillance to discover the source of a disease or environmental threat, identify and treat those who may have been exposed, and assure that the threat is reduced or eliminated.

Public health is often confused with health care. A health care provider diagnoses and treats each of his/her individual patients. Public health professionals diagnose whole communities and develop a plan of action to improve the health status of the entire population. Public health professionals collaborate and bring together those who can affect a problem.

Although the principal role of public health has remained the same, its focus has changed over the years. Early in the 20th century, public health efforts were primarily directed to disease prevention. Environmental safeguards, such as assuring the safety of drinking water and sanitary disposal of sewage, along with the development of vaccines and provision of immunizations, greatly reduced disease incidence and increased life expectancy. In the latter part of the 20 th century many public health agencies took on the responsibility of providing care to indigent populations. Because expanded insurance coverage has made personal health services more accessible to most people, public health is now able to focus more closely on its principal roles of protecting the public and promoting health.

Entering into the 21st century, public health has many challenges such as new diseases, infections and bioterrorism threats. Rapid transit can bring novel, previously non-existent threats to our communities from a world away in a matter of hours. Building capacity and assuring readiness to confront these challenges is essential.

1 This is an excerpt from Public Health Works , Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.