Most governments recognize the importance of public health programs in reducing disease, disability, and the effects of aging and other physical and mental health conditions, although public health in general receives significantly less public funding than medicine. Public health vaccination programs have been successful in promoting health, including the elimination of smallpox, a disease that has plagued humanity for thousands of years.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the main functions of public health programs, including
Providing leadership on issues important to health and engaging in partnerships when joint action is needed;
setting the research agenda and stimulating the collection, development and dissemination of valuable knowledge;
setting norms and standards, promoting and monitoring their implementation;
formulating ethical and evidence-based policy options;
monitoring the situation and assessing health trends.
In particular, public health surveillance programs can
serve as an early warning system for potential public health emergencies;
document the impact of interventions or track progress towards specified objectives;
monitor and clarify the epidemiology of health problems, which allows to identify priorities and develop policies and strategies in the field of health;
diagnose, research and monitor health problems and hazards to the health of the community.
For example, WHO reports that at least 220 million people in the world have diabetes. Its incidence is increasing rapidly, with estimates that the number of deaths from diabetes will double by 2030. In a June 2010 editorial in the medical journal The Lancet, the authors suggested: “The fact that type 2 diabetes, a largely preventable disease, has reached epidemic proportions is a public health affront.” The risk of type 2 diabetes is closely linked to the problem of obesity.
WHO estimates indicate that globally, approximately 1.5 billion adults were overweight in 2008 and nearly 43 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010. The United States leads the way with 30.6% of the population obese. Mexico follows with 24.2% and the United Kingdom with 23%. Once a problem of high-income countries, obesity is now on the rise in low-income countries, especially in urban areas. Many public health programs are increasingly directing attention and resources to the problem of obesity in order to address the underlying causes. Among the methods of prevention are primarily healthy diet and exercise.
Some programs and directions related to the promotion of health and prevention can be controversial. One such example is programs to prevent HIV transmission through safe sex campaigns and needle exchange programs. Another example is tobacco control. Changing smoking behaviour requires long-term strategies, unlike infectious disease control, which usually takes a shorter period to have an impact. Many countries have undertaken major initiatives to reduce smoking, such as increased taxes and bans on smoking in some or all public places.
Many health problems are caused by inadequate personal behaviour. From the point of view of evolutionary psychology, excessive consumption of new substances that are harmful due to activation of the established reward system for substances such as drugs, tobacco, alcohol, refined salt, fats and carbohydrates. New technologies such as modern transport also lead to a decrease in physical activity.
Areas of application in public health
Public health not only improves the health of the population by implementing specific interventions at the population level, but also identifies and assesses the health care needs of the population, including. evaluating current health services and determining whether they meet the goals of the health care system;
clarifying the requirements according to the opinion of health professionals, community members and other stakeholders;
identifying the most appropriate interventions;
considering the resource requirements for the proposed interventions and assessing their cost-effectiveness;
support decision-making in health care and health service planning, including any necessary changes.