Public Health 101: Ten Great Achievements

[HuckleB]

http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2010/09/public_health_101_ten_great_ac.php

"When I first started to get interested in public health several years ago, I thought of it mostly as dealing with things like vaccines and handwashing. From one of my friends who enrolled in a Master of Public Health program, I learned that it actually covers a whole range of issues that affect the population's health and quality of life - things like workplace and highway safety and smoking cessation, in addition to control of infectious diseases.

The word "population" is key to understanding public health. Healthcare providers focus on individual patients; public health workers focus on entire populations. Of course, many healthcare providers participate in public health work, and when they do things like administer vaccinations they're helping promote the health of the population as well as of the individual patient.

To get a sense of public health's scope and impact, it's helpful to check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century. The accompanying articles on these achievements are specific to the US, but many of these improvements happened simultaneously in other countries that were able to devote sufficient resources to public health.

Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century

1. Immunizations

At the start of the 20th century, people used to die routinely from infectious diseases like measles, polio, smallpox, and diptheria. The combination of vaccine development and policies promoting childhood immunization have brought the toll of these diseases and others close to zero. For instance, a 2008 Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report piece on measles explains: Before introduction of measles vaccination in 1963, approximately 3 to 4 million persons had measles annually in the United States; approximately 400--500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 1,000 developed chronic disability from measles encephalitis.

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And the rest of the list is worth looking at, too, IMO. It's might be worth taking a look at the history of such measure now and then, so as to help with perspective, and more easily offer a reality check.

:hi: