Sociology and the field of public health

Abstract

munity life. Foremost have been provision of water and food in sufficient supply and of good quality, prevention or control of disease, provision of care to sick and disabled, relief of destitution, and control of physical environment as it seemed to be linked to health conditions. The relative emphases given to these problems have varied from time to time, but they are related, and from them has developed public health as we know it today. C. E. A. Winslow in 1920 defined public health from this point of view as the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health and efficiency through organized community effort for sanitation of environment, control of communicable infections, education of individual in personal hygiene, organization of medical and nursing services for early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and development of social machinery to insure everyone a standard of living adequate for maintenance of health, so organizing these benefits to enable every citizen to realize his birthright of health and longevity. With a few minor alterations, this definition is still valid: public health is community action in interests of health. Thus, public health is a significant functional system of community. Evidences of activity related to community health have been found in very earliest civilizations, and public health activity has been linked in one way or another with political,