The key responsibilities of public health institution and agencies

Post date: Aug 26, 2019 4:45:32 PM

In a big way, public health is often intertwined with medicine, even if they view and approach health from different lenses. Public health, in a nutshell, refers to what is done together as a society to ensure ideal conditions in which everyone is healthy. It takes the wider, community-based view. In this blog, Captain Martin Lloyd Sanders, Ph.D., CSP, looks at some of the main responsibilities of any public health entity.

First, any public health institution is tasked to diagnose and investigate any health hazard or problem within the community it functions in. Public health officials must figure out who is affected by any such health emergency, and why. The entire science of epidemiology is devoted to investigating such health trends.

Public health departments must also monitor, identify, and find solutions to such community-wide health issues. Public health services are thus reliant on sound data gathering methods, without which they wouldn’t be able to determine what is needed, how to allocate resources, and which concerns should be considered priorities.

Once public health professionals find out what’s going on and whom a given health concern is affecting, it must mobilize its people to inform, educate, and empower the community. Along with this campaign is the needed mobilizing of community partnerships to solve the problem. It must be noted that it’s rare that both health promotion and disease prevention are done by singular entities. These require the help and consent of everyone within the community, says Capt. Martin Lloyd Sanders.

Captain Martin Lloyd Sanders, Ph.D., CSP, is an expert in biological safety, field medical operations, biosecurity, occupational safety and health, infectious disease epidemiology, and environmental health services. For related posts, visit this blog.

Disclaimer: This site was prepared by Martin L. Sanders in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed are the author's own and do not reflect the views of the USPHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government.