The notion of public health started some 400 years ago with disease control to prevent the further spread of diseases. Since then, public health has evolved and these days includes health promotion as well as health protection.
Now, as we stand on the verge of the 21st century, public health professionals are aware of the imbalance between the global magnitude of factors that affect human health and the inadequate structures in place to address them. Global integration is moving at a rapid pace, fuelled by faster communication and greater movement of people and ideas, yet the world continues to use nineteenth century structures based on individual nation states. These changes require new solutions, with effective international co-operative action, with devolved decision making that ensures implementation.
Effective policies to ameliorate them will require concerted international action and public health professionals can make a difference to this process, as researchers identifying the health effects of these factors, as advocates for action, and as agents for communicating to the public the nature and scale of threats to health.
If the ‘new’ public health defines health as an investment factor for a good community life focusing on the behaviour of individuals and the conditions of life that influence behaviour the questions where we stand now and how we are going to achieve this ‘new’ public health need answering.
The European Public Health Association (EUPHA) is an umbrella organisation for public …