Pithy overview of public health

PUBLIC HEALTH practitioners use diverse methods. Although their impact can sometimes be direct (eg, vaccinating school children to stop the spread of measles), many outcomes take a while to emerge. Years might elapse between the formation of a hypothesis about the cause of illness (eg, tobacco smoking) and consequent improvement in the community’s health (eg, reduced lung cancer rates), brought about by a suite of public health activities such as surveillance, epidemiology, biostatistics, communication, education, politics, partnership development, legislation, regulation, clinical trials, health promotion and health system financing and management.