What is public health?

It’s sometimes easier to think about public health as an approach that allows you to refocus medicine, nursing and health sciences away from the individual (the traditional ‘doctor and patient’ model of clinical medicine), and onto a community, or group of people. This approach can be applied to various clinical disciplines, such as mental health, cancer, women’s health, cardiovascular health or diabetes, to name a few. It is also applicable to health programs, research and policies, such as healthy ageing interventions, infectious disease control measures, and international aid efforts.

Public health facilitates the effective and cost-efficient provision of health services, prevention strategies, treatments, policies and health research programs that benefit the many. A great deal of public health activity is undertaken to drive improvements for a population, communicating evidence to facilitate change through clinical guidelines, health policy, and other guides to best practice in healthcare. These improvements can take many forms, achieving better patient outcomes, cost-efficiency, and driving health equity, whereby everyone has a fair opportunity to achieve their highest level of health.

This pursuit of health equity lends itself to a systems-based approach, rather than emphasizing the role of the individual in their health. A public health approach includes understanding and modifying social, economic, cultural and commercial factors that influence health status. It can also involve considering the accessibility of health services – are they provided in a way that is culturally safe, or at a location and at a time that enables community members to easily access them?

Whether it’s to negotiate access to locked datasets for research, or to align with regional neighbours on pandemic-related health policy, the ability to critically appraise medical evidence, and to forge strong partnerships is absolutely essential in public health.

A career in public health is varied. It could involve conducting research; developing or delivering health promotion programs and public health interventions; developing health policy at a local, national or international level; education; or helping to deliver healthcare in conflict zones.

One thing you can be pretty sure of however – you won’t be working in a laboratory.

To find out more about this varied and incredibly rewarding career field, visit our public health careers page.

Common terms in public health

Public health is such a broad field that this list isn’t exhaustive, but here are some common terms you may hear associated with public health:

  • Health promotion

    Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social, economic and environmental determinants.

  • Biostatistics

    The statistical backbone of clinical research (including clinical trials, population studies, and other projects), supporting good trial design, data collection and data analysis.

  • Epidemiology

    Epidemiology describes how health conditions (both infectious and non-communicable) move among populations, and why and how they affect certain areas or populations.

  • Clinical trials

    Used to test a medical, surgical, pharmaceutical or behavioural intervention in people. They are run following a rigorous set of guidelines to limit bias, and provide evidence to guide screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a range of health conditions.

  • Epidemiological modelling

    Disease progression within communities is influenced by the characteristics of the infectious agent itself, as well as the characteristics of the population. Mathematical models can be used to predict spread of disease, and how effective control strategies will be.

  • Qualitative methods

    The lived experience of people is increasingly integrated into public health research, through Patient Reported Outcome Measures and other qualitative research methods like interviews, surveys and focus groups. These help ensure that research focuses on issues that matter most to the target population, thereby improving translation and implementation.

  • Evidence synthesis

    This is the process of seeking available medical knowledge on a particular topic, evaluating its strength, and then pooling results to produce more powerful findings and recommendations. Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and living guideline models form a vital part of clinical practice guidelines around the world.

  • Implementation and communication

    Implementation science and communication are also vital to public health. They help translate research findings into practical solutions for real-life use, and make sure that important findings and new knowledge is shared with, and understood by, health practitioners, health policy-makers, and the general public.

  • Health economics

    This allows us to understand which prevention strategies and treatment pathways provide the most bang for buck, thereby helping health financiers make difficult but important decisions when budgets are constrained. Taxpayer money funds health services, and budgets are finite, so it’s important that health dollars are spent wisely, not wastefully.

  • Behaviour change

    Behaviour change in public health aims to change personal knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour to prevent disease and illness. A variety of models exist to better facilitate behaviour change, depending on the health topic and population circumstances.