Question

What's the difference between medical approach and public health approach? For example, if I were to compare the medical approach with the public health approach to a disease or epidemic (obesity, hypertension, etc.), what would be 3 things medical approach look at/focus on/do vs. 3 things public health side would look at/focus on/do? I appreciate examples, they help me understand the concept better. Thank you!

Answer 1

Ans) Public health deals with preventing disease and promoting health at the community or population level. While doctors treat us when we're sick, public health professionals try to prevent us from getting sick in the first place. For example, public health professionals try to prevent influenza infections by promoting hand washing and flu vaccines.

- The biggest difference between public health and medicine is that public health deals with health from the perspective of populations, while medicine deals with health from the perspective of individuals.

- In medicine, the patient is the individual person. In public health, the patient is the entire community.

- Medical professionals diagnose our individual health problems by listening to us describe our symptoms and performing necessary medical tests. Public health professionals diagnose community health problems using scientific research and disease surveillance systems. Public health professionals use two important indicators to measure population health: disease prevalence and disease incidence.

• Disease prevalence is the number of individuals within a population who have a particular disease at a given time.

• Disease incidence is the number of new cases of a particular disease within a population in a given time period. Prevalence tells us how widespread the disease is, while incidence tells us about the risk of contracting a particular disease.