Global Public Health

1667 Words4 Pages

After 150 years of public health research and intervention, there are bound to be many lessons to draw upon which can provide the insight to guide public health professionals and institutions as they design and implement specific strategies, policies, and measures to increase global resilience for “complex health emergencies”. Identifying both the modifications to public health systems and looking closely from the history of managing environmental and other threats to the public health sector increases the world’s adaptive capacity to more effectively cope and manage with public health emergencies. Major advances have been made during the past decade in the way the international community responds to challenges of complex emergencies. The public health and clinical response to disease of acute epidemiological potential has improved dramatically based on prior knowledge of success and failure. Every year, new public health campaigns are started in efforts to change health outcomes and improve health behavior, but it must be understood public health is always changing and we must use what we have learned over the years to combat the ever so changing health world.

Throughout public health’s history we have witnessed success stories and unfortunately witnessed failed initiatives. One way to better understand how to deal with any public health crisis is to look at the experience in dealing with other public health issues, especially those where there has been progress made. From the eradication of smallpox and potentially the most important public health achievement in American History---the chlorination of drinking water all the way to the current crises of malaria, obesity, TB and HIV/AIDS we see the realization of what a true ca...

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...ainly call into question the credibility of the public health profession, as did the collapse of the disastrous malaria eradication effort.

Works Cited

1)"Obesity Statistics." The Obesity Society. The Obesity Society, 2010. Web. 12 Dec 2010. .

2) Henderson, Donald. "Eradication: Lessons from the Past." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (1999): 16-22. Web. 12 Dec 2010.

3) Hung, Less Shiu. "The SARS epidemic in Hong Kong: what lessons have we learned?." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 96.8 (Aug 2003): 374-378. Web. 12 Dec 2010. .

4) Ruger, Jennifer. "Global Tobacco Control: An integrated approach to global health policy." Palgrave MacMillan (2005): 65-69. Web. 12 Dec 2010. .

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