public health

1. Define public health PG.6
 What we as a society collectively do to ensure that conditions exist in which people can be healthy. Mission in public health is to generate organized community effort to address the pubic interest in health by applying scientific and technological knowledge to prevent disease and promote health.
 Examples: access to care, healthy food, clean water and air, roof overhead.

2. Contrast medical vs. public health impact on the gains in life span years
 Medical:
 Public Health:

3. Describe the three essential core functions of public health and provide examples. See fig. 1-1 for examples (pg. 5). Pg. 7
 Assessment refers to systematically collecting data on the population, monitoring the population’s health status, and making information available about the health of the community.
 Policy development refers to the need to provide leadership in developing policies that support the health of the population, including the use of scientific knowledge base in making decisions about policy.
 Assurance refers to the role of public health in ensuring that essential community- oriented health services are available, which may include providing essential personal health services for those who would otherwise not receive them. Assurance also refers to making sure that a competent public health and personal health care workforce is available.

4. Describe the core competencies for all public health professionals pg. 8
 There are 34 competencies divided into 8 groups: analytic/ assessment, policy development/ program planning, communication, cultural competency, community dimensions of practice, basic public health services, financial planning and management, and leadership and systems thinking.
 Three levels of skill (awareness, knowledge, and proficiency) are assigned to each competency on the basis of the public health job requirements. It is recommended that these categories of competencies be used for curriculum