1: Public health is a very broad concept it can mean in the health of the
whole population and freedom from disease, but it can also mean the
prevention of sickness and poor health, the removal or the mitigation of risks
to the population, so it means the promotion of good health rather than
just treating sickness. Two: Many different terms have been used for public health
and these have changed over time. It's been called social medicine,
community medicine, new public health health promotion, social hygiene and in
more recent times multidisciplinary public health. Three: Excavations of the
civilization of Mohenjo-Daro in northern India which existed 4000 years ago have
shown that there they were providing clean water and drains in order to
improve the health of the population. Four: Sanitation and a clean environment was
what public health meant when it began its modern history in the nineteenth
century, then public health activists campaigned for clean water for better
housing for the provision of proper sanitation at a time when the Industrial
Revolution was having a very bad effect on the health of the population. Five:
the coming of germ theory meant that public health changed its focus and
germs were something that affected the individual body and they could be
understood through laboratory science. Six: In the UK public health doctors
ran services in local government in the 1920s and the 1930s
and it was confidently expected at the time that the Public Health Service
would be the formation of the new National Health Service however that
didn't happen. Seven: after the Second World War both in the UK and elsewhere
public health changed its focus to look at lifestyle issues and chronic disease
and the long term risk of particular issues of lifestyle this is when issues
such as smoking and lung cancer heart disease and diet came onto the public
health agenda. Eight: now public health has taken up again in the early 21st
century some of the issues which it was concerned with in the past
among them air pollution and also epidemic disease has come back onto the
agenda. Nine: public health is now and historically an international or global
enterprise with the spread of disease internationally through travel and by
other means and also with issues such as antibiotic resistance affecting both
countries in the north and in the south. Ten: public health is a controversial
area and it's also beset by dilemmas and it has been criticized for promoting
the nanny state it's also been criticized for promoting interventions
such as vaccination which might not always be beneficial to the individual
but which promote the good health of the whole population