Public health facts for kids
Public health is the science dealing with prevention there is a disease that is a threat to the overall health of a community, as well as with prolonging life and promoting health. The aims are achieved through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, public and private organizations, communities and individuals.
It bases on health analysis of a handful of people or all the inhabitants of several continents rather than on an individual. Public health includes such parts as epidemiology, biostatistics, health services, environmental, social, behavioral, and occupational health.
Public health intervention prevents rather than treats a disease through surveillance of cases and promotes healthy behaviors such as hand washing and vaccination programs. In outbreaks of an infectious disease, treating a disease may be vital to preventing it in others.
Most countries have their own government public health agencies, sometimes known as ministries of health, to respond to domestic health issues. Many diseases are preventable through simple, non-medical methods. Public health plays an important role in disease prevention efforts in the developing world and in developed countries, through local health systems and through international non-governmental organizations. In the developing world, there may not be enough trained health workers or monetary resources to provide a basic level of medical care and disease prevention.
Images for kids
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Newspaper headlines from around the world about polio vaccine tests (13 April 1955)
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Emergency Response Team in Burma after Cyclone Nargis in 2008
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1802 caricature of Edward Jenner vaccinating patients who feared it would make them sprout cowlike appendages.
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Sir Edwin Chadwick was a pivotal influence on the early public health campaign.
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John Snow's dot map, showing the clusters of cholera cases in the London epidemic of 1854.
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Paul-Louis Simond injecting a plague vaccine in Karachi, 1898.
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Public health nursing made available through child welfare services in U.S. (c. 1930s)
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Logo of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, founded by nursing pioneer Lillian Wald in 1893
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Elena Arizmendi Mejia and volunteers of the Mexican Neutral White Cross, 1911
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Three former directors of the Global Smallpox Eradication Programme read the news that smallpox had been globally eradicated, 1980
