Essay On Public Health

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Public health is aimed at protecting and improving the health of the collective population and communities to prevent disease, promote health and prolong life among the population, through educational programs, promotion of healthy lifestyles and research for diseases and injury protection (WHO, n.d).
The main public health functions are:
• Identifying health problems by assessing and monitoring the health of communities and populations
• The formulation of public policies (ethics & philosophy) to resolve inconsistencies in local and national health problems
• Ensure that all populations have access to appropriate and cost-effective care, including health promotion and disease prevention services (what is public health, n.d).
Public health is largely influenced, facilitated and funded at various levels of government-federal, state/territory and local governments, varying associations, commonwealth government and funded government working groups.

The Federal government is funded by the collection of taxes and provides many services to help assist people (eg. pensions). It also has an important role in providing funding to many areas. The State/territory government raises revenue, but is dependent on the federal funding to execute their programs and local government raise their funds through rates, but they also depend on some state and federal funding (Levels of government in Australia, n.d).

Nutritional health forms one of the main building blocks within public health. It dovetails into the public health system through an extensive infrastructure of government and non-government organizations, services and programs, delivery systems and the food supply system (production through to consumption).

Public health nutritionists inco...

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...ional health (NSA-The nutrition society of Australia, n.d).

NSW has many health initiatives and campaigns in place for practitioners of nutritional medicine. One mandatory health initiative in place within schools is the “fresh tastes at school”. It was created for students across Australia to acquire the taste for health foods and encourage them in the future to make healthy decisions (Healthy kids eat well, get active, 2005).

Another campaign is the “go for 2&5” which is aimed at increasing the number of adults and children eating adequate amounts of fruit and vegetables (Healthy kids eat well, get active, 2006).

As discussed, Nutritional Health is inherent within Public Health. There are clear commonalities and alignment as they are based on a foundation that has a common underlying philosophy, scope of ethics and objective towards the collective population.

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