Public Health – Services, Funding, and Strategic Initiatives

Public Health – Services, Funding, and Strategic Initiatives

Public health refers to the science, practices, and organized efforts employed towards community health promotion, protection and prevention of diseases. It also encompasses society’s decisions based on available health information to improve overall well-being. Public health comprises various agencies, including government-sponsored agencies and healthcare efforts, non-profit organizations, and other community-focused healthcare providers. The collaborative efforts of these players in public health focus on the health outcomes of an entire community rather than the individual.

The providers of public health services are major government- and public-sponsored healthcare systems, including governmental agencies and community healthcare organizations. On the other hand, the recipients of public health services are the people within the community who directly utilize the services. Funding for public health services is publicly funded, majorly from taxes through state and federal budgetary allocations. The various services can also be funded through user fees.

Public health services include disease surveillance, prevention, control, health promotion, and education. It also includes services such as vaccinations, promoting maternal and child health, as well preparing and managing various health emergencies. Public health services are located at all levels, from the national to the community level.

Public health providers within public health include public hospitals, community health centers, and healthcare agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The providers include a multitude of healthcare professionals working within the public health system.

Based on the definition, agencies, and roles of public health identified above, the major initiatives in a strategic plan focusing on a public health organization are expected to include strategies for disease prevention, control, and health promotion, improve equitable access to health services, and improved involvement of the community in health care planning. I would also expect the use of technologies and data in public health, such as disease data, to understand disease characteristics (Ghamizi et al., 2020), and understand and predict human behaviors (Marsch, 2020). All of these are central to successful strategic planning for current and future public health.

References

Ghamizi, S., Rwemalika, R., Cordy, M., Veiber, L., Bissyandé, T. F., Papadakis, M., Klein, J., & Le Traon, Y. (2020). Data-driven Simulation and Optimization for Covid-19 Exit Strategies. Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 20, 3434–3442. https://doi.org/10.1145/3394486.3412863

Marsch, L. A. (2020). Digital health data-driven approaches to understand human behavior. Neuropsychopharmacology 2020 46:1, 46(1), 191–196. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-020-0761-5

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Define Public Health. What is it? Who provides and receives services through the public health system? How is it funded? What services are provided through public health? Where is public health located? What types of providers would you see within public health? Based on your answers above, what major initiatives would you expect to see in a strategic plan focusing on a public health organization?