Applied Public Health Essentials: Guidelines for Public Health Principles, Concepts and Application

Public health—the science and art of disease prevention and health promotion—remains significant in the advances of medical and health sciences in ameliorating the health of the population. The contributions of public health to the health of the U.S. population has been remarkable in the 21st century, and it continues to be so as public health confronts emerging challenges due to the aging U.S. population, climate changes, global warming, bioterrorism, and emerging pathogenic microbes. Remarkably, the epidemiologic transition from infectious diseases as the leading cause of mortality in 1900s to chronic diseases today came as a result of persistent immunization, the reduction in vaccine-preventable diseases, and improvements in sanitation and nutrition—even before the streptomycin trials in mycobacterium tuberculae in 1947—thanks to public health contributions. Illustratively, public health achievements in the 21st century are viewed in light of their contributions to motor vehicle safety, safer workplaces, infectious disease control, decline in coronary artery disease and stroke mortality, safer and healthier food, healthier mothers and babies, family planning, fluorination of drinking water, vaccination, and recognition of tobacco as a health hazard.

The scope of public health is broad and reflects what we, as a society, do collectively to ensure the conditions necessary for people to remain healthy. Within this scope, the framework for public health performance recommends the collaboration between governmental agencies (federal, state, and local), public and private sectors, and the communities. The Institute of Medicine, in its 1988 response to “public health in disarray,” clearly described the core functions of public health as (1) assessment, (2) policy development, and (3) assurance. The process upon which public health carries out these functions requires the integration of its core functions into the essential public health services, namely, (1) health services monitoring and identification of community health needs; (2) diagnoses and investigation of health problems and health hazards in the community; (3) informing, educating, and empowering people about health issues; (4) mobilizing community partnerships to identify and solve health problems; (5) enforcing laws and regulations that protect and ensure safety; (6) linking people with needed personal health services and ensuring the provision of health care when otherwise unavailable; (7) ensuring a competent public health and personal health care workforce; (8) evaluating effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population-based health services; and (9) researching new insights and innovative solutions to health problems.

 The training of public health professionals to address the essential public health services requires a curriculum that integrates the core functions of public health into the core disciplines of public health, mainly (1) epidemiology, (2) biostatistics, (3) behavioral and social sciences, (4) environmental sciences, and (5) management and policy sciences. The knowledge of these areas and the application of cross-cutting core competencies (such as communication and informatics, diversity and culture, animal control, public health biology and pathology, professionalism, programs planning, and systems thinking) serve to provide the graduates of public health programs with the preparation (knowledge and skills) needed to succeed in this field today.

 The author of this text, Applied Public Health Essentials has presented—in a simplified and concise manner—an introduction to public health as public health principles and practice, which is rarely presented in undergraduate and graduate programs, and have discussed the mission, goal, core functions, history, and challenges of public health. Whereas undergraduates and graduates of public health tend to focus on a set module or discipline, in spite of our recommendation of the broad knowledge of the public health core disciplines, this approach has made it possible for undergraduate and  graduates as well as  potential graduates of public health to acquire competency in these core areas. This book is intended to prepare undergraduates/graduates of public health for an important examination that will bring collegiality and credibility to this profession. One  hopes that this work will point readers in a direction that will stimulate their appetite to learn more about the assessment of health issues in the population, about making sense of data, about the role of behavior in health, about the impact of environment on health as well as environmental justice, and about policy development in the management of public health services. Very uniquely, this book embraces the epigenomic public health initiatives, such as gene and environment interaction in subpopulations disease risk determinants.  If we believe that all books are perspectives, then no book, no matter the volume, will be able to present all the subject matter of any given field.           

This book, which presents the core competencies as learning objectives, should serve to remind the faculty at the various schools of public health in the nation of what students are expected to acquire in terms of knowledge, attitudes, and skills prior to joining the public health workforce. To the graduate students of public health, this book should serve as a companion to the Public Health Core Competencies, Certified in Public Health Review by the same author. The current publication by author on previous pandemic, SARS(CoV2)- COVID-19 Pandemic Prevention and Control will be utilized in further pandemic and control in public health viral prevention and control. Therefore, it is with great optimism that one recommends this book, with the hope that knowledge gained from a simplified and illustrated  text of this nature will inform quality performance and evidence-based public health as well as systems thinking in public health program development, conduct, and evaluation.