Description:
The Role of Public Health:
- Promote and encourage healthy behaviors
- Prevent and control epidemics and the spread of disease
- Prevent injuries, illness, and disabilities
- Promote accessible, high quality health services
- Promote a healthy environment and protect against the effects of environmental hazards on health
- Respond to disasters and assist communities in recovery
Essential Public Health Services:
- Monitor health status to identify community health problems
- Identify, investigate, control, and prevent health problems and environmental health hazards in the community
- Inform, educate, and empower the public about current and emerging health issues
- Promote community partnerships to identify and solve health problems
- Develop policies and plans that support individual and community health efforts
- Enforce laws and regulations that protect health and ensure safety
- Link people to needed health services
- Assure a diverse, adequate, and competent workforce to support the public health system
- Evaluate effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population-based health services
- Assure access to primary health care for all
- Foster the understanding and promotion of social and economic conditions that support good health
- Conduct research to seek new insights and innovative solutions to health problems