- published: 24 Dec 2014
- views: 69428
Public health refers to "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals." It is concerned with threats to health based on population health analysis. The population in question can be as small as a handful of people, or as large as all the inhabitants of several continents (for instance, in the case of a pandemic). The dimensions of health can encompass "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity", as defined by the United Nations' World Health Organization. Public health incorporates the interdisciplinary approaches of epidemiology, biostatistics and health services. Environmental health, community health, behavioral health, health economics, public policy, insurance medicine and occupational safety and health are other important subfields.
The focus of public health intervention is to improve health and quality of life through prevention and treatment of disease and other physical and mental health conditions. This is done through surveillance of cases and health indicators, and through promotion of healthy behaviors. Examples of common public health measures include promotion of hand washing, breastfeeding, delivery of vaccinations, and distribution of condoms to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living organism. In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt and self-manage when facing physical, mental or social challenges. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in its 1948 constitution as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." This definition has been subject to controversy, in particular as lacking operational value and because of the problem created by use of the word "complete" Other definitions have been proposed, among which a recent definition that correlates health and personal satisfaction. Classification systems such as the WHO Family of International Classifications, including the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), are commonly used to define and measure the components of health. Health is that balanced condition of the living organism in which the integral, harmonious performance of the vital functions tends to the preservation of the organism and the normal development of the individual.
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science, psychology, marketing, and advertising. In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, it has suffered in more recent years from being blurred, as a result of conflation of the idea of a public with the notions of audience, market segment, community, constituency, and stakeholder.
The name "public" originates with the Latin publicus (also poplicus), from populus, and in general denotes some mass population ("the people") in association with some matter of common interest. So in political science and history, a public is a population of individuals in association with civic affairs, or affairs of office or state. In social psychology, marketing, and public relations, a public has a more situational definition.John Dewey defined (Dewey 1927) a public as a group of people who, in facing a similar problem, recognize it and organize themselves to address it. Dewey's definition of a public is thus situational: people organized about a situation. Built upon this situational definition of a public is the situational theory of publics by James E. Grunig (Grunig 1983), which talks of nonpublics (who have no problem), latent publics (who have a problem), aware publics (who recognize that they have a problem), and active publics (who do something about their problem).
In this video, Dr Greg Martin takes a look at the question, "what is public heath?" and also considers what it is that public health professionals do including research and surveillance and actions to prevent disease and improve access to care and treatment. This is a useful video for people wanting to work in public health. If you're considering a career in public health and want to know a little more about what a job in public health might look like, then take a look...
Public health problems are diverse and include infectious diseases, chronic diseases, emergencies, injuries, environmental health threats, and more. Learn about public health’s role in smoke-free laws, disease tracking, and hurricane disaster response. Find out how focusing on the health of groups of people has made our lives longer, prevented early deaths, and continues to make us healthier. This video also introduces the Public Health Impact Pyramid as a framework to improve health. Comments on this video are allowed in accordance with our comment policy: http://www.cdc.gov/SocialMedia/Tools/CommentPolicy.html This video can also be viewed at http://www.cdc.gov/publichealth101/videos/public-health/PH101-Intro-To-Public-Health__wmv_48Kps.wmv
Viruses and other infectious diseases, like Ebola, are some of the main threats to our increasingly interconnected world. Rachel asks how we can pick up infections at the onset of symptoms and provide an early warning system. Rachel McKendry is Professor of Biomedicine and Nanotechnology at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL. She is Director of i-sense, an EPSRC-funded interdisciplinary research collaboration to develop global early-warning systems for infectious diseases such as pandemic influenza, MRSA and HIV by combining self-reported symptoms on the web with low-cost mobile phone-connected diagnostic tests. -- TEDxExeter 2015 took the long view both back into the past and ahead into the future. We asked our speakers to help us understand the challenges that face us now -...
Motivational Interview Episode 14: All About Public Health Are you interested in one day pursuing a career in public health? Perhaps you want to get a MPH, work in public health, or be a public health advocate....Well tune into this interview to hear from a Master of Public Health and a public health professional! Enjoy USAID Global Health Fellow https://www.ghfp.net/
Sue Desmond-Hellmann is using precision public health — an approach that incorporates big data, consumer monitoring, gene sequencing and other innovative tools — to solve the world's most difficult medical problems. It's already helped cut HIV transmission from mothers to babies by nearly half in sub-Saharan Africa, and now it's being used to address alarming infant mortality rates all over the world. The goal: to save lives by bringing the right interventions to the right populations at the right time. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, ...
For more information on Public Health click on links below: Faculty of Public Health: http://www.fph.org.uk Public Health England: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england Health Education Wessex: http://www.wessexdeanery.nhs.uk/public_health.aspx Public Health Online Resource for Careers, Skills and Training http://www.phorcast.org.uk
People with various jobs in the public health industry describe their positions.
When Lissa Rankin, MD researched what optimizes the health of the body and what predisposes the body to illness, she was surprised by what she found. When asked "What's the greatest risk factor for disease?" she found that perhaps it's not our diet, our exercise regimen, the absence of bad habits like smoking, or genetics that most profoundly affect the health of the body. To her surprise, she found that scientific evidence suggests that loneliness may be the greatest public health issue few people are talking about. We are tribal beings, and when we feel lonely, our nervous systems sense a threat, activating stress responses that predispose the body to illness. When we come together in conscious community, our nervous systems relax and the body's self-healing mechanisms activate, which ma...
How public health is the lens to address poverty, violence, discrimination, and injustice. Redefining the role of public health to be the 21st century urban solution and critical social justice tool, in Baltimore and around the world. Recorded at TEDxBaltimore January 2016. As the Commissioner of Health in Baltimore, Dr. Wen has been reimagining the role of public health. She has engaged public health in violence prevention and launched an opioid overdose prevention program that is training every resident to save lives. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
October 2016 — In our series “Why Public Health?” we ask Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health students and alumni to talk about what drew them to the field. Sarah McGough, SM ’16, PhD ’19 is studying infectious disease epidemiology with a focus on mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and Zika .
In this video, Dr Greg Martin takes a look at the question, "what is public heath?" and also considers what it is that public health professionals do including research and surveillance and actions to prevent disease and improve access to care and treatment. This is a useful video for people wanting to work in public health. If you're considering a career in public health and want to know a little more about what a job in public health might look like, then take a look...
Public health problems are diverse and include infectious diseases, chronic diseases, emergencies, injuries, environmental health threats, and more. Learn about public health’s role in smoke-free laws, disease tracking, and hurricane disaster response. Find out how focusing on the health of groups of people has made our lives longer, prevented early deaths, and continues to make us healthier. This video also introduces the Public Health Impact Pyramid as a framework to improve health. Comments on this video are allowed in accordance with our comment policy: http://www.cdc.gov/SocialMedia/Tools/CommentPolicy.html This video can also be viewed at http://www.cdc.gov/publichealth101/videos/public-health/PH101-Intro-To-Public-Health__wmv_48Kps.wmv
Viruses and other infectious diseases, like Ebola, are some of the main threats to our increasingly interconnected world. Rachel asks how we can pick up infections at the onset of symptoms and provide an early warning system. Rachel McKendry is Professor of Biomedicine and Nanotechnology at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL. She is Director of i-sense, an EPSRC-funded interdisciplinary research collaboration to develop global early-warning systems for infectious diseases such as pandemic influenza, MRSA and HIV by combining self-reported symptoms on the web with low-cost mobile phone-connected diagnostic tests. -- TEDxExeter 2015 took the long view both back into the past and ahead into the future. We asked our speakers to help us understand the challenges that face us now -...
Motivational Interview Episode 14: All About Public Health Are you interested in one day pursuing a career in public health? Perhaps you want to get a MPH, work in public health, or be a public health advocate....Well tune into this interview to hear from a Master of Public Health and a public health professional! Enjoy USAID Global Health Fellow https://www.ghfp.net/
Sue Desmond-Hellmann is using precision public health — an approach that incorporates big data, consumer monitoring, gene sequencing and other innovative tools — to solve the world's most difficult medical problems. It's already helped cut HIV transmission from mothers to babies by nearly half in sub-Saharan Africa, and now it's being used to address alarming infant mortality rates all over the world. The goal: to save lives by bringing the right interventions to the right populations at the right time. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, ...
For more information on Public Health click on links below: Faculty of Public Health: http://www.fph.org.uk Public Health England: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england Health Education Wessex: http://www.wessexdeanery.nhs.uk/public_health.aspx Public Health Online Resource for Careers, Skills and Training http://www.phorcast.org.uk
People with various jobs in the public health industry describe their positions.
When Lissa Rankin, MD researched what optimizes the health of the body and what predisposes the body to illness, she was surprised by what she found. When asked "What's the greatest risk factor for disease?" she found that perhaps it's not our diet, our exercise regimen, the absence of bad habits like smoking, or genetics that most profoundly affect the health of the body. To her surprise, she found that scientific evidence suggests that loneliness may be the greatest public health issue few people are talking about. We are tribal beings, and when we feel lonely, our nervous systems sense a threat, activating stress responses that predispose the body to illness. When we come together in conscious community, our nervous systems relax and the body's self-healing mechanisms activate, which ma...
How public health is the lens to address poverty, violence, discrimination, and injustice. Redefining the role of public health to be the 21st century urban solution and critical social justice tool, in Baltimore and around the world. Recorded at TEDxBaltimore January 2016. As the Commissioner of Health in Baltimore, Dr. Wen has been reimagining the role of public health. She has engaged public health in violence prevention and launched an opioid overdose prevention program that is training every resident to save lives. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
October 2016 — In our series “Why Public Health?” we ask Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health students and alumni to talk about what drew them to the field. Sarah McGough, SM ’16, PhD ’19 is studying infectious disease epidemiology with a focus on mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and Zika .
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