Intro to public health

• Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
• Public Health is concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis.
• Public Health is the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental health and efficiency through organized community efforts.
• Public Health is the science and art of promoting health, preventing disease, and prolonging healthy life through organized efforts of society.
• Disease is the failure of the body defense mechanism to cope with forces tending to disturb body equilibrium.
• The host, agent, and environment are the three factors that may affect health.
• University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Pharmacy – Department of Pharmacy factors that may affect health include living or non-living disease agents, inherent and acquired characteristics of man, and environmental factors in which man lives.
• No part of this material shall be reproduced nor translated in any form or by means, including photocopying, scanning, recording, re-posting, without obtaining written permission from the resource person.
• A request must be addressed to the author/resource person sent via mail or respective University of Santo Tomas email address.
• Etiology is the science or theory of the causes or origins of diseases.
• Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of disease and the factors that influence the occurrence of disease in groups of people.
• The focus of a public health intervention is to prevent rather than treat a disease through surveillance of cases and the promotion of healthy behaviors.
• From the early beginnings of human civilization, it was recognized that polluted water and lack of proper waste disposal may spread vector-borne diseases.
• Early religions attempted to regulate behavior that is specifically related to health, from types of food eaten to the extent to which certain behaviors could be indulged (such as drinking alcohol or sexual relations).
• The establishment of governments placed responsibility on leaders to develop public health policies and programs to gain some understanding of the causes of disease to ensure stability and prosperity and maintain overall health.
• Cholera, the 2nd pandemic that devastated Europe between (1829 – 1851), was first fought by the use of what Foucault called “social medicine”, which focused on flux, circulation of air, location of cemeteries, etc.
• All those concerns, born of the miasma theory of disease, were thus mixed with urbanistic concerns of the management of populations, which Foucault designed by the concepts of biopower.
• By Roman times, it was well understood that proper diversion of human waste was a necessary tenet of public health in urban areas.
• The development of quarantine in the medieval period helped mitigate the effects of other infectious diseases.
• The science of epidemiology was founded by John Snow’s identification of polluted public water as the cause of an 1854 cholera outbreak in London.
• In the early 1700s, the practice of vaccination was used on a very limited basis in the West.
• Dr. Snow believed in the germ theory of disease as opposed to the prevailing miasma theory.
• Public health operates on a whole community paradigm, while medicine operates on a whole patient paradigm.
• The practice of vaccination did not become prevalent until the 1820s, following the work of Edward Jenner to treat smallpox.
• Monitor health status to identify community health problems, diagnose, investigate health problems and health hazards in the community, inform, evaluate and empower people about health issues, mobilize the community partnership to identify and solve health problems, develop policies and plans that support individual and community efforts, enforce laws and regulations that protect health and ensure safety, link people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of health care when otherwise unavailable, assure a competent public health and personal health workforce, evaluate ef
• During the 14th century Black Death in Europe, it was believed that removing the bodies of the dead would further prevent the spread of bacterial infection.
• Public health spectrum ranges from excellent to feeling under par, while medicine spectrum ranges from definitely ill to dead.
• Public health intervention is aimed at the environment, human behavior & lifestyle, while medicine focuses on medical care.
• Michel Foucault, the plague model of governmentality was to be opposed to the later cholera model.
• Public health programs providing vaccinations have made incredible strides in promoting health, including the eradication of smallpox.
• The Miasma theory taught correctly that disease results from poor sanitation, but it was based only upon the prevailing theory of spontaneous generation.
• Important public health issues include HIV - AIDS, diabetes, smoking, infectious disease, etc.
• The Chinese developed the practice of variolation following a smallpox epidemic around 1000 BC.
• Prevent epidemics and the spread of disease, protect against environmental hazard, prevent injuries, promote and encourage healthy behaviors, respond to disaster and assist communities in recovery, assure the quality and accessibility of health services.
• Public health emphasizes prevention, while medicine emphasizes diagnosis, health promotion, and treatment.
• Government recognize the importance of public health programs in reducing the incidence of disease, disability and the effects of aging, although public health generally receives significantly less government funding compared with medicine.
• Public health skills include analytical (epidemiology), organizational lines of specialization, and technical skills, while medicine skills include skills in assessment, policy, development and assurance.
• Microorganisms, which are now known to cause many of the most common infectious diseases, were first observed around 1680 by Anton van Leeuwenhoek.
• During the 20th century, the dramatic increase in average life span is widely credited to public health achievements, such as vaccination programs and control of infectious diseases, better safety policies such as motor-vehicle and worker safety, improved family planning, fluoridation of drinking water, and programs designed to decrease chronic diseases such as heart disease and stroke.
• There is a recognition that our health is affected by many factors including where we live, genetics, our income, our educational status and our social relationships, known as “social determinants of health”.