is the organised response by society to protect and promote health, and to prevent illness, injury and disability. The starting point for identifying public health issues, problems and priorities, and for designing and implementing interventions, is the population as a whole, or population sub-groups.
Definition taken from 'A Memorandum of Understanding; to establish a National Public Health Partnership for Australia', 1997, and a modification of that proposed in Last, JM. Public Health and Human Ecology. Connecticut. Appleton and Lange. 1987.
The scope of public health activities and processes can be grouped into three key areas.
Public health intelligence is involved with gathering and analysing information about the determinants of health, the causes of ill health and the patterns and trends of health and ill health in the population.
Public health intervention refers to developing policy, setting priorities for actions, developing plans, coordinating services, strategies and interventions aimed at prevention, protection and promotion of the health of the community, where promotion is the action taken to solve public health problems.
Public health infrastructure refers to the administrative, legislative and informational systems developed for making priorities, for developing policy, for funding, for monitoring and surveillance, for research and evaluation, for program delivery, and includes the workforce required to accomplish these tasks.
| AHMC: | Australian Health Ministers' Conference |
| AHMAC: | Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council |
| AIHW: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
| NHMRC: | National Health and Medical Research Council |
| 'The Partnership': | National Public Health Partnership |
| WHO: | World Health Organisation |