Public Health and...

What we do...     

For many professionals and residents alike, the distinction between public health and clinical medicine (also known as medical care or health care) is unclear.  Although they are interconnected and work together to improve the health of our community, they are not the same. Medical care focuses on the individual and healing, while public health focuses on the community as a whole and prevention.

Recognizing Public Health

Each public health program or service is designed for a specific population and can be categorized into one of the three core public health functions: Assessment, Policy development, and Assurance. In the following excerpt from the textbook Introduction to Public Health by Mary Jane Schneider, the author compares and contrasts public health and medical care, providing a clearer distinction between these two practices.

“In carrying out its core functions, public health – like a doctor with his/her patient – assesses the health of a population, diagnoses its problems, seeks the causes of those problems, and devises strategies to cure them. Assessment constitutes the diagnostic function, in which a public health agency collects, assembles, analyzes, and makes available information on the health of the population. Policy development, like a doctor’s development of a treatment plan for a sick patient, involves the use of scientific knowledge to develop a strategic approach to improving the community’s health. Assurance is equivalent to the doctor’s actual treatment of the patient. Public health has the responsibility of assuring that the services needed for the protection of public health in the community are available and accessible to everyone. These include environmental, educational, and basic medical services. If public health agencies do not provide these services themselves, they must encourage others to do so or require such actions through regulation.”[i]