Public Health Professionals

Broadly speaking, public health professionals are all those individualswho practice public health principles and methods in diverse areas such as program management, policy development, research, and surveillance. A recent Institute of Medicine study on educating public health professionals for the twenty-first century defines a public health Professional as ‘‘a person educated in public health or a related discipline who is employed to improve health through a population focus’’ (Institute of Medicine, 2003: 30). The scope of work of public health professionals is large,rift gold and to some extent, not very strictly defined. Public health professionals may primarily focus on individual risk factors of disease and health conditions. Alternately, they may focus on social, environmental, and economic factors influencing health, such as income, education, housing, and so on. Another angle of addressing public health can be making the political landscape more committed to improving health of populations through appropriate policy development and advocacy. Finally, public health professionals can be primarily engaged in research – academic and operational – to build the evidence base for appropriate interventions and policies.

Public health professionals form an important part of the health workforce, together with clinical practitioners and other health professionals. The field of public health practice exists inmost countries, although in different forms, and is developed to varying degrees. In countries such as the United States, UK, Australia, and Canada, the profession is well developed and widely recognized. In others, mostly developing countries of Asia and Africa,rift gold the profession is still struggling to establish an identity separate from and of equivalent standing as clinical medicine.