Tag: publichealthblog

Disease Detectives?

Posted on by Prav

One of the first activities in my course module – Issues in Public Health was looking at the role of an epidemiologist.

What is an epidemiologist?

The explanation I personally love was by the CDC* who described them quite aptly as ‘Disease Detectives’. These sleuths search for clues looking for the cause of disease, try and identify who are the people at risk and then try to figure out how we can stop the disease from spreading and preventing a future episode.

And while familiar, I definitely did not realise that there were some differeing opinions on what the focus of epidemiologists or public health should be.

The critique has been that the focus has been to much on individual risk factors while excluding all the other factors that contribute to disease.

But should public health professionals be focusing on the social determinants of health solely OR other individual risk factors?

A good example used was in discussing how to combat Malnutrition. How do we solve this and what should the focus be?

Do we take a step back and address the other social issues contributing to poverty leading to malnutrition. Or do we spend time and effort finding out that by supplementing Vitamin A in these individuals we greatly reduce their risk of blindness and death by starting them on Vitamin A supplements? While we haven’t solved the issue of Malnutrition per se, I feel it is better to be doing something that reduces the negative outcomes cause the reality is that pushing for those changes with bureaucracy can be long-drawn out. So, why not assist and intervene where we can?

However, this of course does mean that we are diverting our focus, energy and more importantly our already limited resources. And is it then the best utilisation of our resources? – now that’s a concept in Health Economics that we will discuss in another post.

But what do you think?

*CDC – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Public health at the crossroads: which way forward?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)09494-4/fulltext
–> this article is available for free

Should the mission of epidemiology include the eradication of poverty?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(98)01327-0/fulltext
–> this is unfortunately paid unless you have access

Why Public Health?

Posted on by Prav

I often found myself feeling that I wished I could do more for my patients. In a sense, I found clinical medicine to be somewhat limited in this aspect. We focused on the here and now, pre-emptively made plans for the future and we did our best, but it simply was not enough. 

Surely there was more that could have been done to prevent this? 
Surely there was more that we could do?

I often felt in practice that what I did treatment wise accounted for little in terms of overall quality of life and health. My patients backgrounds, education levels, financial, environmental and social issues played a far more important role in determining this. The Social Determinants of Health shows that while medical care is important – it only accounts for about 10-20% of what factors into a persons overall health. Which just goes to show how incredibly important public health is. 

While recognition of the importance of public health is on the rise, there are still a lot of people who do not really understand what it encompasses. And hopefully I will make that clearer in my posts to come. 

365 days of Public Health?

Posted on by Prav

Hi there.

Welcome to 365 days of Public Health!

I’m Praveena and I am a medical doctor with an interest in Paediatrics and of course, Public Health.

I decided to start start 365 days of public health for three reasons.

1) I am pursuing my MSc in Public Health with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine by distance learning and I think this is a good way for me to hold myself accountable and keep up to date with my course every single day.

2) When I said I wanted to pursue my MSc in Public Health a lot of people (both medics and non medics) did not understand why. I then realised that there are a lot of people who do not really understand what public health is about and what it entails. So I am hoping that this blog gives you a glimpse into some of the principles and concepts involved in public health and why it is such an important part of our lives. While I will cover my curriculum, I will also put forth bits and bobs that I find interesting about public health and the work that is done in the field.

3) And of course I am hoping that through this blog I get to meet other individuals in and out of the field who will hopefully teach me a thing or two along the way.

Cheers!

Praveena
P.S – I know 2020 is a leap year, but I figure we will stick with 365 since the school year only started in Sept/Oct anyway.