As defined in 1976 by a Milbank Memorial Fund Commission on Higher Education for Public Health, "Public Health is the effort organized by society to protect, promote, and restore the people’s health. The programs, services, and institutions involved emphasize the prevention of disease and the health needs of the population as a whole."
Thus, the scope of public health is wide. Those who provide a preventive health service on the basis of a demonstrated need in a population group are "doing" public health, as are individuals involved in health-care planning and policy, and those who evaluate programs. However, the common threads are organized and collective. Public health problems are not health problems considered as they occur in a series of individuals presenting themselves to a health-care provider, but are considered in the context of a community as a whole. Public health professionals answer questions like: "How frequently does this illness occur, and to whom? How important is it relative to other health problems? What can the community do to prevent it?"
One way to look at public health functions is by stratification. At the micro level, the service is relatively direct as compared to the macro or planning level. For example, the director of a venereal disease clinic is functioning at the micro level, whereas the individual who perceived the need in the population compared to other needs, determined that there should be such a clinic, and allocated resources for it, is functioning at the macro level. Viewed in terms of these levels, the public health role for particular categories of health professionals can be seen from two perspectives: (i) at the micro level. From the perspective of a health professional whose primary role is not in public health, but who is performing some public health function, And (ii) at the macro level, from the perspective of a health professional whose primary role is in public health.
Traditionally, medical education has been disease-oriented, turning only in recent years to patient-orientation. The parallel situation in pharmacy has been an historic drug orientation with recent emphasis on patient and interprofessional relationships. Usually, health professionals study basic sciences and then learn by "practicing" those skills believed necessary to perform their future roles under the guidance of role models. For pharmacy students, this traditionally has meant learning about the drug, its source, formulation, and activity, as well as how to translate a doctor’s order into a therapeutic product. When pharmacy students "practiced," there was not necessarily any interaction between the pharmacy student and patients or customers, or between the pharmacy student and other health professionals. Role models were often restricted to nonpracticing faculty members until the student’s apprenticeship. As pharmacy education became more patient-oriented, students began to "practice" in clinical settings, and while they were still under the wing of a school of pharmacy, their role models began to include community and hospital pharmacists. In this respect, pharmaceutical education began to resemble that of medicine, nursing, and dentistry, i.e. health professional students interacting with patients under the guidance of practitioners. However, medicine and nursing educators long ago recognized that the health education model, whether disease- or patient-oriented, failed in terms of teaching public health, because of its inherent inability to take a population perspective. Their solution, of course, resulted in the special schools and departments which now teach public health and train public health professionals.
