Welcome to Public Health

Public health, which encompasses a plethora of methods behind preventing diseases and promoting health, has always been indirectly linked with the environment in which populations live. Both an art and science, public health initiatives have been mandated by both common sense and statistical findings. For example, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis noted in 1847 (albeit without any form of scientific explanation) that hand washing vastly decreased mortality rates of women in child labor, a practice performed by midwives but not doctors.

A famous statistician named John Snow’s investigation of the Cholera outbreak in London was one of the first examples of the field of public health using statistics to prove a correlation between health troubles and the environment.

Today, we take many of the innovations popularized by public health initiatives for granted. Moving forward, public health officials will have many more problems to deal with, many of which stem from climate change issues that produce extreme weather conditions. As health experts continue to tackle these problems, they’re hoping that years from now, health initiatives ameliorating the effects of climate change will come as second nature, just as hand-washing is to us today.

How Public Health Degrees are Adapting to Health Challenges Posed by Climate Change

Two Sides of The Global Food Crisis

Mental Health and Wellness

Head Injury Prevention In Youth Sports: An Online Guide

Public Health Job Outlook

Public Health Resources

Public Health Careers

Public Health Guide

Doctors help the individual patient with his or her health, but a different group of professionals is needed to solve health problems on a larger scale. Those working in the field of public health work to educate the public on health and implement programs to improve sanitation and prevent disease.

The Career

If you’re interested in a health-based career, but not necessarily interested in becoming a physician, public health might be for you. Rather than focusing on the individual patient and his or her conditions, public health practitioners look at general wellness, at the level of the individual, the community, and the world. Some of the situations a public health practitioner might study and work with could include: sanitation systems in a small town in Poland; the spread of HIV in a major Nigerian city; obesity prevention campaigns in a Texas suburb; the geography of malaria cases in rural Cambodia; or the continuing evolution of a bacertium causing an emerging infectious disease in multiple nations. It’s a career that tackles health problems on a wide scale and offers great opportunities for international travel. If you’ve got a good mind for science and statistics, are capable of dealing with often emotionally trying situations, and want to devote your career to assisting humankind, then public health might be down your alley.

Public Health in History

For as long as those in power have been aware of ways to improve health, there has been some kind of public health. Ancient kings, realizing that their wealth and power depended on some degree of sanitation, took initiatives to mitigate the effects of diseases like malaria and cholera, both of which plagued the ancient world and remain problems today. Rome had a well-developed sewer system, and smallpox inoculation was developed independently in China and West Africa. Religions also played a role in the development of public health; many religious prohibitions of certain foods and activities were pragmatic public health solutions in the ancient world. For instance, the kosher prohibition of shellfish makes sense in an era without refrigeration.

In Medieval Europe and Asia, the spread of the Black Death was a major impetus to develop better public health systems. Large sections of cities were burned, thus killing the fleas that spread disease. Bodies were removed from areas where the general public would encounter them, and quarantines were established. The so-called ‘miasma’ theory suggested that some kind of ‘bad air’ caused disease. The goal of Medieval public health was to prevent the circulation of this miasma.

After the Enlightenment, public health became more systemic and scientific. The rise of germ theory brought a truly modern understanding to the medical world, and public health programs spread around the world, with governments promoting garbage collection and sewer building to cope with the rise of urban society. Louis Pasteur’s germ theory in the 1880s led to the creation of vaccines, and John Snow’s cholera map gave birth to the science of epidemiology.

Modern public health works on multiple levels. Especially in the Third World, combating the spread of infectious disease remains a high priority. Lower respiratory infections, AIDS, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, and malaria are currently the world’s deadliest infectious diseases as reported by the World Health Organization. Some diseases, while once widespread, have been functionally eradicated; smallpox and polio are two notable examples. In more developed nations, public health initiatives have focused more on the prevention of chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Public health experts in countries like the US and UK have focused their efforts on, for example, campaigns to encourage healthy eating and smoking cessation. Increasingly, public health experts are spending their energies developing ‘public health 2.0′ a more ‘user-based’ form of public health; in public health 2.0, experts post information online and patients and citizens communicate with each other to mutually develop suitable public health systems with the guidance of professionals.

The Public Health Degree

Public health careers are generally tailored to the level of education. The specificity of the public health degree increases as the level of education gets higher and higher. The discipline of ‘public health’ as separate from medicine is less than 100 years old. It dates back to the foundation of the program at Johns Hopkins University in 1915. Today there are about 30 accredited public health schools in the U.S., and a host of others on all continents.

–Bachelor’s Degree

Those individuals with a bachelor’s degree generally majored not in public health but in a related discipline: nutrition science, environmental science, biology, urban planning, or geography. These are mainly the support staff in public health organizations, performing specific tasks related to the discipline.

–Master’s Degree

The master’s in public health (M.P.H.) has become the standard advanced degree in the world of public health. When colleges and universities mention their ‘public health programs they are generally referring to the M.P.H. or the closely related master’s of science in public health (M.S.P.H.). The M.P.H. is more often the preferred degree among working public health practitioners, while the M.S.P.H. is the standard degree for those pursuing the academic side of public health, such as epidemiological or biostatistical research. Many M.P.H. candidates became attracted to public health while pursuing their M.D. The top public health programs in the United States at present are at Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Many public health schools are now offering online coursework to help working health professionals attain an M.P.H., and some offer fully online degrees.

–Doctorate Degree

For those public health practitioners looking to acquire sub-specialty training, public health schools offer doctorate degrees. Some of these are classed as Ph.Ds, while others are specifically a doctorate in public health (Dr.P.H.). The Ph.D in public health mirrors the M.S.P.H., and is more geared towards academic settings. The Dr.P.H. is the doctoral equivalent of the M.P.H., and is pursued by those looking for a career in public health practice.