public health journals

public health journals

The Importance of Public Health Journals

1. The Role of Public Health Journals

The internet has become an incredible tool worldwide, and with free online access, there is potential for those in various countries to stumble upon and learn from such valuable journals.

An example of a broader audience-aimed journal would be Health Affairs. This is a health policy journal which offers a great variety of article types and scope. High-level executives in the Public Health Department and health sectors often write for the journal, providing helpful insight and direction from experience. The information provided would be useful to a wide audience, and Health Affairs offers free blog-level access for those with less income.

Certain public health journals can be quite limited in scope, as well as their target audience. An example of a non-government organization involving certain journals would be the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC’s “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” is specific in topic as it deals primarily with infectious disease and its maintainability in preventing such a disease in the United States. This journal is tailored for those working in the public health sector and clinicians. The drawback is that people in foreign countries who would greatly benefit from the knowledge provided are unaware of its existence due to limited advertisement and availability.

Public health journals are widely accessible through libraries and universities. They contain incalculable knowledge sorely searched for in many countries abroad. They have the ability to reach those in less developed countries, with the transfer of knowledge to assist in bettering public health methods and preventing disease/injury. Unfortunately, many lack important resources such as fire, electricity, and medical aid. But when possible, public health is vitally important in disease prevention and health maintenance in everyday life.

2. Advancements in Public Health Research

Over the years, an insight has been gained of the importance of research as a means to build a decisive body of evidence to direct health policy and practice. Two types of research have predominated. Research looking at the effectiveness and efficiency of health services has grown considerably over the last two decades. More recently, a greater understanding of public health and an awareness of the social determinants of health have resulted in an increased demand for high-quality research which aims to reduce health inequalities and improve the health of the poorest members of society. This kind of research has led to the development of the NHS R&D programme and the establishment of the Public Health Research Consortium (PHRC), which aims to commission research on areas that are of importance to public health in the UK. Published research supported by PHRC can be found in many of the leading public health research journals, adding to the body of evidence that public health professionals can use to improve health. Efficacy research has led to the development of guidance in the form of NICE public health intervention guidance and NICE clinical guidelines. These evidence-based guidelines are a resource public health professionals can use to make informed decisions of how they can best improve the health of the communities they serve.

2.1 Evidence Based Research

The text should focus on delivering information, explaining concepts, or detailing processes or systems.

3. Promoting Evidence-Based Practices

Second, the information in journal articles can be used to practice theories using proper methods. Information or knowledge found in research cannot be directly applied to decision-making. The information must be analyzed first to draw conclusions or make the best judgments based on the information itself. Then, these judgments can be implemented in decisions or actions. There are four methods to practice theories, as referred to by Weiss in his article “Evaluation, Decision, and Complexities” in 1998: best practice, best judgment, theoretical practice, and persuasive practice. All of these methods aim to facilitate effective decision-making and action-taking. However, the best method for applying valid and reliable information is best practice, as it allows for the implementation of the most effective services or actions on the issue. The information in research can be analyzed using quantitative approaches and qualitative analysis. The appropriate quantitative approaches and qualitative analysis should align with the information found in the journal. Nowadays, public information is often too shallow, obtained easily and quickly from the media. This information is often brief and only shows the end result, without providing any background to analyze and understand the context of the subject. On the other hand, research usually involves analyzing and testing a theory to obtain results and conclusions. Therefore, it is important to match the analysis of information obtained from journals with the decision-making and action-taking process to promote evidence-based practices.

First, medical public health journals are the main source for getting valid and reliable information or knowledge. Journals contain detailed and thorough coverage, making them very useful for professionals or decision-makers to base their decisions on facts and real conditions. Evidence-based practices require the use of the best evidence in the decision-making process, as defined by Sackett et al. (1997): the integration of the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. The Public Health Agency of Canada also defines evidence-based practices as a decision-making approach that integrates the best available evidence with knowledge and skills to make impactful decisions on a client’s health. The utilization of information and health knowledge is necessary to promote evidence-based practices. Public health practice is committed to providing the best information and applying this knowledge to improve and maintain community health. Government agencies, non-profit organizations, and the private sector in every country are expected to provide the best decisions and effective services for the community. Providing the best information refers to valid and reliable information, which is usually obtained from research. Research is a systematic, mathematical, empirical, and critical analysis aimed at knowledge development and theory testing. The best valid and reliable information is the result of research published in journals. Therefore, journals are the main source of information for applying evidence-based practices.

4. Addressing Global Health Challenges

The world can ill afford the many biases and inefficiencies in the present global research system. Developing countries need more research on the diseases that exact the greatest toll in terms of morbidity and mortality. It is often pointed out that only 10% of the world’s health research resources are devoted to the problems that take 90% of global health expenditure and cause 90% of the global burden of disease. This imbalance must be addressed. But even in framing the right questions, there are many examples of how existing knowledge is not adequately exploited. To give one instance, although the causative relationship between smoking and lung cancer was firmly established in the 1950s, it was not until the 1980s that effective tobacco control began to be seen as a priority in developed countries, and it is still not seen as a major public health issue in much of the developing world. High quality health and medical research can help every country to redirect resources towards the health enhancing measures that give the best value for money.

An effective and efficient health and medical research system can help the world’s poorest countries to address their health problems. This more than anything else will help to reduce widespread disparities in health status, both within and between countries. At present, the global health research system is severely deficient. The bulk of resources for health research in most countries is absorbed by studies into health care and health services, with only a minority being devoted to the basic knowledge that is crucial to understanding disease processes and to finding new ways to prevent or treat them. In developed countries too, where most of the world’s biomedical scientists are located, the research agenda is heavily slanted towards the study of conditions that are relatively unimportant on a global scale, while the major killers and causes of disability are often neglected.

5. Enhancing Public Health Policies

Public health policies are important tools of public health systems in our environment. It is an essential vehicle for defining public health problems, identifying risk factors, and proposing and implementing solutions. Our concern is what makes an effective policy? Katz and others concretized four attributes in their exploration of effective public health policy: admissibility, practical significance, technical quality, and generalizability. To translate, this means an effective policy will address an issue thought to be important, is an issue that won’t disappear, the policy has to be of sound judgment and have an understandable logic, and it needs to be transferable to similar problems in the future. Using these as guidelines will ensure an effective policy. How can we increase the chance of having policies with these attributes? One means to increase the chance of having policies that hold strong attributes is having them informed off of evidence and existing research. This can be done by using a variety of research from different academic institutions and other professional databases. Public health journals serve as an informative tool to public health policymakers. They are vehicles that inform its readers of specific issues within the community or the threats to the health of a population. Journals analyze, compare, and discern the ideas and practices to improve public health worldwide. Journals are specifically useful for policymakers to identify risk factors and weaknesses of a given health issue and to propose solutions to better the health of the population. Journals are policy-friendly and often contain policy and law-related implications and recommendations. Whether it is primary research findings, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses, many articles contain evidence of the health issue and are deemed useful to policymakers to gain a better understanding of the issue. Journals are even useful for healthier policy in other fields. Through governmental health-related decisions and policies, other sectors are likely to be influenced. This could be anything from health implications of agriculture, the economics sector, or education and jobs. There are often health implications of decisions in these fields, and these policies are likely to affect the health of the population either positively or negatively. Journals would allow policymakers in these fields to understand the implications of their decisions on the health of the population and give suggestions for decisions that would be a betterment for public health. Decision, research, and analysis of policy are also public health practices. Journals are tools that can be used to train future policy analysts and future health policy experts. With compelling arguments, journals can convince students of public health to take on future public health-related policy jobs. This analysis and research of policy would result in the creation of student-tried policy, which would be a learning tool for decades to come in improving public health. This learning by the next generation of policymakers will help create stronger policies with the aforementioned attributes and a cycle of evidence-informed policy, bettering the health of future populations.