HLTB16 Lecture 1

● What's public health?
○ Science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting physical health and
efficiency
○ Focuses on the health of a population (overall health)
● How is it done?
○ Comes from sanitation and hygiene
■ Controlling infections
■ Development of the social machinery that will ensure to everyone in the
community of living an adequate maintenance of health
■ Example: vaccines
● What are the missions of Public Health

○ Community structure and organization
● What are the core functions of Public health

○ Assessments
■ Diagnostic function, where a public health agency collects, assembles and
analyzes to make information available to the public
● Policy development
○ Doctors treatment plan for a sick patient, using scientific knowledge to develop a
strategic approach to improving communities health
● Assurance
○ Doctors actual treatment
○ Public health is responsible for assuring the services needed for the protection of the
community making it available and accessible
● What are the benefits of public health programs?
○ Saving money on medical costs
○ Public health contributes to the health of a population over medicine
○ American life expectancy has increased from 45 to 75 years over the course of the 20th
century ---> 5 of those 30 additional years can be attributed to the work of the medical
care system
■ Majority of the gain came from public health improvements
■ Better nutrition
■ Housing
■ Sanitation
■ Occupational safety
● What are the responsibilities of Public Health?

○ Educate the public and politicians to develop policies using science which plays a role in
maintaining and improving health of the public
● What are the politics and public health policy

○ The community is the one who has to pay for the treatments through taxes but the
government is the one who decides how much funding is used towards a treatment
which limits one freedom to improve the health of a community
● What is the relationship between public health and medicine?

○ Medicine is the concern of individuals and improving ones health, it also looks at healing
patients who are ill
○ Public health takes a look at a community trying to improve the health of a population,
it also focuses on preventing illness
Sciences of Public Health

● What is epidemiology
○ Study of the distribution and determinants of health related states or events in specific
populations and the application to prevent and control of health problems
○ USES:
Etiology:
― Studying the cause(s) of disease(s) or conditions
― Determining primary risk factor or agent, or ascertaining causative factors
― Analyzing contributing factors
• Disease Spread:
― Analyze the characteristics of the agent or causative factors (in the context of
infectious disease)
― Determine mode of disease transmission
― identify and determining spatial and geographic patterns
• Disease burden:
― Reporting on morbidity, disability, injury, and mortality
― Identifying and analyzing social, spatial and geographic disparities
• Health policy, planning and services:
― Aid the planning and development of health services and programs
― Provide administrative and planning data
― Provide foundation for public health measures and policies
● What are the preventions and interventions?
○ There are Five approaches to health problems in a community
1. Define the health problem
2. Identify the risk factors associated with the problem
3. Develop and test community level interventions to control or prevent the cause
of the problem
4. Implement interventions to improve the health of the population
5. Monitor the interventions to assess their effectiveness
● What is the epidemiological Triangle?

○ Epidemic --> a disease that is occurring more frequently. An example is a Flu
○ There are three factors
■ HOST --> humans
■ Environment --> means of transmission where the agent affects the host
■ Example: air, water, food, transit
■ Agent --> disease causing bacterium or virus
● Why is Public Health controversial
○ People disagree on what healthy eating means as everyone contains their own
definitions based on personal beliefs etc.
● What is Public health and social reform?

○ In the 19th century reformers campaigned for improved housing, trade unions and child
health
● What is the economic impact?

○ Most public health measures have a negative economic impact due to some segment of
the population or industry
■ Any new proposal is likely to inspire opposition from some quarter which may
cost jobs and add to the price of the product
● What is individual Liberty? + What is the tragedy of the commons?

○ One of the primary purposes of the government is to promote general welfare which is
also known as constitution
○ Health and safety + economic well being are major factors which contribute to general
welfare
○ The governments role is to provide maximum health and safety for the community as a
whole
○ Idea of each individual has the interest of maximizing their own health but if everyone
to do that than the environment would be ruined. Which is why to save the
environment one has placed fair and equitable limitations on maximizing ones health
● Moral and religious oppositions
○ Most controversy occurs in public health on moral grounds when it confronts sexual and
reproductive issues
■ Example: transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy etc
○ Public Health approach to the problems that occur includes sex education in school and
the provision of contraceptive services
■ Example: Condoms

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● What's public health?

● What are the missions of Public Health

● What are the core functions of Public health

● What are the responsibilities of Public Health?

● What are the politics and public health policy

● What is the relationship between public health and medicine?

Sciences of Public Health

● What is the epidemiological Triangle?

● What is Public health and social reform?

● What is the economic impact?

● What is individual Liberty? + What is the tragedy of the commons?

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