GC: n

S: WHO – http://www.who.int/about/role/en/ (last access: March 2013); http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00333506 (last access: 4 September 2014).

N: 1. public health, the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental health, sanitation, personal hygiene, control of infection, and organization of health services. From the normal human interactions involved in dealing with the many problems of social life, there has emerged a recognition of the importance of community action in the promotion of health and the prevention and treatment of disease; this is expressed in the concept of public health.
2. Comparable terms for public health medicine are social medicine and community medicine; the latter has been widely adopted in the United Kingdom, and the practitioners are called community physicians. The practice of public health draws heavily on medical science and philosophy and concentrates especially on manipulating and controlling the environment for the benefit of the public. It is concerned therefore with housing, water supplies, and food. Noxious agents can be introduced into these through farming, fertilizers, inadequate sewage disposal and drainage, construction, defective heating and ventilating systems, machinery, and toxic chemicals. Public health medicine is part of the greater enterprise of preserving and improving the public health.
3. Public health refers to all organized measures (whether public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. Its activities aim to provide conditions in which people can be healthy and focus on entire populations, not on individual patients or diseases. Thus, public health is concerned with the total system and not only the eradication of a particular disease.

S: 1 & 2. EncBrit – http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482384/public-health (last access: 21 September 2014). 3. WHO – http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story076/en/ (last access: 21 September 2014).

SYN: population health

S: NAVARRO p. 826

CR: health, healthiness, insalubrity, sanitation.