Community & Public Health

Community and public health in general are divided into two parts the first one is the community health and the second one is the public health.

Public health is the science of protecting and improving the health of families and communities through promotion of healthy lifestyles, research for disease and injury prevention and detection and control of infectious diseases. In Public health professionals try to prevent problems from happening or recurring through implementing educational programs, recommending policies, administering services and conducting research in contrast to clinical professionals like doctors and nurses, who focus primarily on treating individuals after they become sick or injured. Public health also works to limit health disparities. A large part of public health is promoting healthcare equity, quality and accessibility.

Also the term Public health refers to all organized measures 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. The three main public health functions are the assessment and monitoring of the health of communities and populations at risk to identify health problems and priorities. Second is the formulation of public policies designed to solve identified local and national health problems and priorities. And third is to assure that all populations have access to appropriate and cost-effective care, including health promotion and disease prevention services.

The second part is the Community health it is a field of public health and related to a discipline which concerns itself with the study and improvement of the health characteristics of biological communities. While the term community can be broadly defined, community health tends to focus on geographical areas rather than people with shared characteristics. The health characteristics of a community are often examined using geographic information system (GIS) software and public health datasets. Some projects, allowing the general public to examine the characteristics of any given community in participating countries.

Community health may be studied within three broad categories the first is the Primary healthcare which refers to interventions that focus on the individual or family such as hand-washing, immunization, circumcision, personal dietary choices, and lifestyle improvement. Second is the secondary healthcare refers to those activities which focus on the environment such as draining puddles of water near the house, clearing bushes, and spraying insecticides to control vectors like mosquitoes. And third is the tertiary healthcare on the other hand refers to those interventions that take place in a hospital setting, such as intravenous rehydration or surgery.