public health officer

public health officer

The Importance of Public Health Officers

1. Overview of Public Health Officers

Many believe public health is a government service that is primarily geared toward healthcare for the poor. The reality is that public health is truly what the words imply and has been defined as “organized community efforts aimed at the prevention of disease and promotion of the health of the community”. The United States’ Public Health Service (USPHS) has operated on this very principle since its inception in 1798. This branch of service is operationally positioned under the Health and Human Resources department. It is one of America’s primary federal agencies dedicated to the protection of the health of the American people. Within the USPHS sit the Commissioned Corps and Task forces; teams of health professionals who have been strategically placed in areas where their specific talents can be utilized to fulfill the mission of the USPHS. Public Health Officers are a part of these teams and are key in executing public health-related matters in rural and urban areas throughout the nation. The primary role of the Public Health Officer is to implement the public health-related missions of the USPHS. These missions are essentially operations aimed at the protection and advancement of the health of the American population. Public Health Officers are responsible for delivering vital health services to a specific medically underserved area. They are often in direct contact with federal, state, and local community government officials whom they assist on health-related issues. Public Health Officers actively conduct health education and disease prevention programs. This can involve anything from immunizing a rural population against infectious disease, teaching health promotion and disease prevention in an urban school, or working with policymakers to institute health-related regulations. Public Health Officers and teams can also be rapidly deployed to an emergency/disaster situation where their medical and public health expertise is crucial to the implementation of effective emergency response.

2. Roles and Responsibilities

Public health officers work in many different settings. Some work in offices, while others work in labs or conduct fieldwork. Work settings can range from local settings to international settings, but most often officers will work at the national level or at the local government level in some type of health agency.

Community service sounds like a broad topic, but it fits right in with the mission of a public health officer. By providing education, officers are preventing the spread of diseases and promoting healthier living, all in an effort to make a difference in the health of the community. Lastly, the knowledge gained from research and the use of policy and laws can create partnerships with the community it is trying to improve, which can help sustain the health improvements that have already been accomplished.

Developing policies and enforcing laws go hand in hand, and often the policy writing is directly related to what the research has found. With conclusive research on a certain topic, officers can write policy in hopes of making a difference and preventing a certain health issue from occurring. Usually, following a new policy, there are laws that need to be enforced and kept in place.

Research is a main task for health officers. Without scientific research, we would know very little about what is making us sick and how to prevent it. Depending on the type of workplace, whether it be a health department, non-profit agency, or a research organization, the research can range from maintaining daily stats on diseases that have occurred to using epidemiology to study an outbreak of a certain disease.

Public health officers have many different responsibilities in the ever-growing field of public health. Their goals are to help prevent diseases, promote healthier lifestyles, and protect the communities they serve. These goals are accomplished by conducting research, developing health policies, enforcing public health laws, providing education, and mobilizing community partnerships.

3. Impact on Community Health

Some health problems are not only reliant on personal behavior of the individual, but also the behavior of a nation. Much of our health is dependent on the environment. This includes the cleanliness of the air and water. According to the public health service, they improved the health of the people of the United States through organized programs to improve sanitation. This program may not have been an action of treating and curing, but it certainly is an action of prevention. Preventing diseases caused by polluted air and water costs far less money, time, and effort. Public health workers face the common dilemma of cost-effective prevention and quality of life, considering people easily shrug things off because they feel it will not impact them in the long run. Global warming is a great threat to our environment in the present and future. This is creating activities such as flooding, drought, and famine because changes in the environment such as temperature and rainfall will likely affect the distribution and occurrence of water- and food-borne diseases, and diseases transmitted by insects, thus creating a need for public health. One controversial international impact of public health is war and the effect on the safety and health of civilians caught in the middle. War can cause widespread displacement of populations. Refugees are at higher risk of many diseases due to their living conditions. They often live in crowded camps with poor sanitation. Lack of clean water and nourishment create an environment ripe with potential health disaster. While some war-torn areas may seem too hazardous to bring public health action, to not do so will likely create even worse possibilities. Public health involvement needs to be done with diplomacy, showing respect to all sides of conflict with the understanding that it is a basic human right to attain the highest possible level of health.

4. Challenges and Strategies

The final challenge for the public health officer today is to understand the essence of his profession and practice it to the best of his ability.

Using the right or wrong strategy can effectively make a difference in public health. At the present time, the public health approach has not been used to its potential, especially in low and middle-income countries. The approach stresses the assessment and solving of health problems at the population level through prevention and promotion as opposed to treatment and cure of diseases at the clinical level. This is to be accomplished by advocating for healthy public policy, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, developing personal skills, and re-orienting health services.

The new challenge put forward by the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research is to influence the terms of globalization. Here, public health officers will need to be bridge-builders between the rich and poor in collaborative research for the development of policy and systems to achieve improved health for the world’s disadvantaged and in identifying ways to mitigate harmful effects of globalization on populations most at risk.

Globalization also opens public health to global partnerships and research for development. In working on global health alliances/public-private partnerships, public health officers will need to ensure that their influence extends beyond the health sector. The formation of alliances is usually directed by foreign policy and finance, thus requiring public health to engage in inter-sectoral dialogue and often work with advisors from these sectors.

In today’s globalized society, public health officers can no longer confine health policy to local or national boundaries. The global environment itself, belonging to no one nation, is an emerging and powerful determinant of health. Often it poses both positive and negative effects, creating health problems for nations and particular groups. An example of a negative effect is the current global pattern of production and consumption, driven by economic and technological change leading to a growing global trade in harmful products. The best known of these is tobacco. These products used in rising quantities all over the world pose a greater disease burden, destroying patterns of health, creating disability, and often death for marginalized populations. This is a major challenge, and public health officers will need to collaborate with other sectors/agencies in working towards policies that promote sustainable patterns of production and consumption.

The role of data and information in public health is vital. But the use of information on health is often given low priority by policy and decision-makers. This is where public health officers must take on the challenge of promoting better understanding of the uses of information by all people who take decisions affecting health (significant decision-makers in health, academia, and industry).

Public health officers in developing countries often face the challenge of unavailability of resources, both human and material, in times of crises. The implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005) aims to help avert this by compelling member countries to strengthen core public health capacity to better protect the global community from acute public health risks.

The challenge that public health officers are facing is to ensure the safety and welfare of the population, thereby reducing morbidity and mortality. They must not only focus on identified problems but also anticipate the problems that the community may face in the future. Financing and resource allocation are critical issues for an effective protection strategy. It is necessary to consider these issues, as well as the social and economic development before the formulation of public health policy.

5. Conclusion and Call to Action

During their time spent ensuring a healthy community, it would be expected that the public health officer could be placed in any situation and hold the ability to respond with effectiveness to any health concern. For example, the majority of public health concerns are local, while also pressing matters may arise from abroad. Even in more privileged societies, the health of a community can deteriorate rapidly and unexpectedly (as in the case of the infectious spread of disease) before returning to a state of chronic stability.

It is in the best interest of a nation state to protect its citizens from harm. In the modern era, this involves due consideration over public health. Public health officers have a critical role to play in this by ensuring that communities are provided with the best possible health outcomes. This should leave little doubt that the position of a public health officer is of paramount importance to any community.