What’s New in Public Health?

According to the US National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, ‘there is strong evidence that behaviour and environment are responsible for over 70% of avoidable mortality’. Health is mostly a function of people’s working conditions, living circumstances and lifestyles. It is affected by economic and social policies: ‘Health care is just one of the determinants’.This is actually time-tested wisdom with roots in all world regions. For example, at the end of the first millennium, Egypt’s Chief Physician, Ibn Ridwan, documented the health conditions in Cairo: lack of planning, dirty crowded streets, suffocating atmosphere, lack of public health services. He advocated unpolluted air and water, and sanitary living quarters. It also resonates with the view of public health practitioners around the world today. It is at the community level that the interplay of actions that promote health is best understood: in how people live, in what control they have over their health conditions, and how this is facilitated.