Since a huge range of factors impact on our health, the work delivered by public health professionals is equally as diverse.
Below are some key examples of public health work, but there are many other areas of practice.
Describes the work to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals or communities through enabling and encouraging healthy lifestyle choices as well as addressing underlying issues such as poverty, lack of educational opportunities and other such areas.
Monitor the occurrence and spread of diseases within a population. Collect, analyse, and interpret health data to identify trends, outbreaks, and potential health risks and develop strategies for disease prevention, control, and response, including vaccination programmes and outbreak investigations.
Provide evidence-based recommendations to policymakers to inform and influence health-related policies. Advocate for health equity and implement evidence-based public health interventions.
Protect the population from health threats, emergencies, and disasters. Develop emergency response plans, coordinate preparedness efforts, and provide guidance on managing public health emergencies such as infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or chemical incidents.
Engage in research to advance the understanding of health issues. Conduct studies and programme evaluations to inform public health strategies and policies.
Collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders in the UK and internationally to address health challenges collectively. These include healthcare providers, community organisations, academia, and the public.
Combining intelligence, evidence, and research to translate data on a given population into effective public health action.
Whilst the work of public health professionals is extremely varied, there are three identifiable domains of public health practice.
These three domains are Health Protection, Health Improvement, and Health Services.
These domains are supported by the underlying functions of public health, which include public health knowledge and intelligence, academic public health, and workforce development.
Health Improvement describes the work to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals or communities through enabling and encouraging healthy lifestyle choices as well as addressing underlying issues such as poverty, lack of educational opportunities and other such areas.
Health Protection professionals work to protect the population from health threats, emergencies, and disasters. They develop emergency response plans, coordinate preparedness efforts, and provide guidance on managing public health emergencies such as infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or chemical incidents.
Healthcare public health improves public health by ensuring health services are of consistently high quality and especially that they are evidence-informed and value-based, and address issues of effectiveness, efficiency and equity.
Functions and standards of a public health system
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