What is Public Health ? Defintion, Comparison

The term public health is coined from two different terms, “public” and “Health”. The term public has several meaning and connotaions such as community. Civic “Municipal”, “Free”, “open”, “Unrestricted”. The term public is also understood as something “not private”. If we look at the other term “Health”. It is one of the most difficult tems to define. Health being a multidimensional concept vam mean different things to different people. It is conceptualized in distinctive ways. Researchers have found that our ideas of health and illnesses have an impact on our health attitudes and behaviour. 

In our nor­mal life we use a tri­ol­o­gy of con­cepts — “ill­ness”, “Dis­ease”, “Sick­ness­es” — inter­change­ably to refer to dif­fer­ent aspects of I’ll health, how­ev­er these terms have dif­fer­ent con­no­taions. Dis­ease is defined as a condition/pathological process that is diag­nosed by a physi­cian or oth­er med­ical expert where’s, ill­ness is defined as the I’ll health the per­son iden­ti­fies them­selves with. Ill­ness being a sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non is often based on self repot­ed men­tal or phys­i­cal symp­toms. Sick­ness, on the oth­er hand, refers to social and cul­ture Cone­cep­tions of health con­di­tion. These include reac­tions such as fear or rejec­tion, which influ­ence how the patient reacts. Accord­ing to Mar­shall Marinker (1975) , dis­ease is the patho­log­i­cal process, devi­a­tion from a bio­log­i­cal norm. Ill­ness is the patien­t’s sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of I’ll health, some­time where no dis­ease can be found. Sick­ness is the role nego­ti­at­ed by the patient with the soci­ety which us pre­pared to recog­nised and sus­tain the patient. 

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Though many peo­ple have define Pub­lic Health there is a jour­nal agree­ment that pub­lic health is a com­plex, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and holistic.The term pub­lic health has var­i­ous con­no­ta­tions. when we use the term ‘Pub­lic Health ‘it can mean dif­fer­ent things depend­ing upon the con­text. dif­fer­ent terms are used to refer to the pub­lic health.Public health is used to refer to 1) a pro­fes­sion ‚2) an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline, 3) activ­i­ties of the Gov­ern­ment and 4) health of the population.

Defining public health

Though many have define Pub­lic Health Wilson’s def­i­n­i­tion of Pub­lic Health is con­sid­ered to be the most acknowl­edged one.

Accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion 2018 Pub­lic Health referred to “all organ­ised major (whether pub­lic or pri­vate ) to pre­vent dis­eases ‚pro­mote health and long life among the pop­u­la­tion as a whole. Its activ­i­ties aim to pro­vide con­di­tion in which peo­ple can be healthy and focus on entire pop­u­la­tion not an indi­vid­ual patients or disease.Thus, pub­lic health is con­cerned with the total sys­tem and not only the erad­i­ca­tion of a par­tic­u­lar disease”.

Pub­lic health is defined as” the sci­ence and art of pro­mot­ing and pro­tect­ing health and well-being pre­vent­ing ill health and long life through the organ­ised effort of soci­ety “(the UK Fac­ul­ty of Pub­lic Health nd)

“Pub­lic health is a sci­ence of pro­tect­ing and improv­ing the health of peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties. this work is achieved by pro­mot­ing Healthy lifestyle ‚research­ing dis­ease and injury pre­ven­tion ‚and detect­ing pre­vent­ing and respond­ing to infec­tious diseases”.(The cen­ters for Dis­ease con­trol and pre­ven­tion (CDC. n.d.).

Bea­gle­hole and Boni­ta’s book “Pub­lic Health at the cross­roads” ( 2004 )define Pub­lic Health as col­lec­tive action for sus­tained pop­u­la­tion by health improve­ment. Broad­ly pub­lic health can be define as a sci­ence of pro­tect­ing the safe­ty and improv­ing the health of com­mu­ni­ties through edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy mak­ing and the search for the dis­ease and injury prevention.

The insti­tute of med­i­cine in its report titled “the future of Pub­lic Health’ notes that “pub­lic health is a coali­tion of pro­fes­sion Unit­ed by their shared mis­sion” As well as (by their focus on dis­ease pre­ven­tion and Health Pro­mo­tion, their prospec­tive approach in con­trast to the reac­tive focus of ther­a­peu­tic med­i­cine and the com­mon sci­ence epi­demi­ol­o­gy” (IOM 1988).

Winslow’s definition of Public Health

In 1920, C.E.A. Winslow ‚pro­fes­sor of pub­lic health at yale uni­ver­si­ty defined pub­lic health as fol­lows :” pub­lic health is the sci­ence and Arts of (1) Pre­vent­ing dis­ease (2) pro­long­ing life (3) Pro­mot­ing health and effi­cien­cy through orga­nized com­mu­ni­ty effort for :

1. The san­i­ta­tion of the environment
2. The con­trol of com­mu­ni­ca­ble infections
3. The edu­ca­tion of the indi­vid­ual in per­son­al hygiene
4. The orga­ni­za­tion of med­ical and nurs­ing ser­vices for the ear­ly diag­no­sis and pre­ven­tive treat­ment of dis­eases and 
5. The devel­op­ment of social machin­ery to ensure every­one a stan­dard of liv­ing ade­quate for the main­te­nance of health , so orga­niz­ing these ben­e­fits as to enable every cit­i­zen to enjoy hsi birth right of health and longevity.

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What is not public health?

1. Not a sin­gle prod­uct or ser­vice pro­vid­ed by one type of health pro­fes­sion­al in one place.
2. Not a sin­gle spe­cial­i­ty but inter trans-disciplinary.
3. A web of rela­tion­ship Among many dif­fer­ent peo­ple and Organ­i­sa­tion about a wide vari­ety of top­ic a dynam­ic system.

Public Health VS medical care

Pub­lic health and its func­tion can be bet­ter under­stood if we com­pare and con­trast it with med­ical prac­tice. med­ical care / med­i­cine focus­es on heal­ing patient who are ill or injured.here indi­vid­u­als are the tar­get of Ser­vice Deliv­ery. on the oth­er hand are the pub­lic health is a major gov­ern­men­tal and social activ­i­ty, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary in nature and extend­ing into almost all aspects of society.Important point to be not­ed here is that the key word is health not Med­i­cine Key focus is on pre­ven­tion and not cure. 

while the med­ical prac­ti­tion­er treat peo­ple who are sick , Pub­lic Health pro­fes­sion­al try to pre­vent peo­ple from get­ting sick or injured in first place.

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Anoth­er point is that in pub­lic health the uni­verse is con­cern is the health of the pub­lic not the dis­ci­pline of medicine.

In sum­ma­ry med­i­cine is more con­cerned with the indi­vid­ual patients where as Pub­lic Health regard the largest com­mu­ni­ty / pop­u­la­tion as its patient.medical care is most­ly dom­i­nat­ed by the cura­tive care where­as Pub­lic Health uses a bal­anced approach of inte­grat­ing pre­ven­tive, cura­tive, pro­mo­tive ‚reha­bil­i­ta­tive and rel­a­tive dimen­sions of careful .