Public Health aims to improve and protect the health of groups of people, rather than about treating individual patients. Public health Officers are graduated to take action to promote healthy lifestyles, prevent disease, protect and improve general health, and improve healthcare services. The ‘population’ they are working for could be a rural community, an entire city, or the global population, but the principles remain the same.
From an education perspective, studying public health has enormous intellectual value in that: The study of public health involves critical thinking and critical decision-making; it gives students a methodology for understanding populations; Population-scale thinking relies on multiple disciplines, thus exposing students to current health care and policy issues.
Public health Officers strive to realize ways of making our communities and our environments healthier, and more capable of providing us with what we need for optimal health.
The graduated students must have a broad understanding of all the factors that contribute to health, the structure of healthcare systems and services, current government policy, and effectively interpret available data. They have to evaluate evidence to devise and implement strategies to improve and protect health, and to improve health services.
Public health students need to be both tough negotiators and simultaneously possess good powers of persuasion to get the community, other stakeholder organizations and politicians to agree and work effectively towards the common goals.
After graduation the graduated students will become experts in a specific area of public health, while others will find that their job incorporates a cross-section of public health activities and/or research. However, their work usually falls within one or all of the following three domains: improving health, protecting health or improving health services.
