Essay On Public Health

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Public health may be defined as “a social and political concept aimed at the improving the quality of life among the whole population through health promotion, disease prevention and other forms of health intervention”.(1) The purpose of public health practice is to improve the health of society rather than individuals and reduce health disparities between individuals, groups, and communities through organized effort of the communities, individuals and organizations. As Marmot points out: “creating a fairer society is fundamental to improving the health of the population and ensuring a fairer distribution of good health”.(2) Besides this, the public health field is expanding to tackling new and contemporary risks: obesity, sexually transmitted

According to marmot report, “inequalities are a matter of life and death”. Health inequality affects everyone except those at the very top of the social ladder. This is because health is socially graded – people farther down the social ladders are less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy as those at the top. Health Inequalities exist due to the unequal distribution of health in the society – “in the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age”.(2) Recent evidence shows that “socioeconomic factors such as income, wealth and education as the fundamental causes of wide range of health outcomes”.(3) For example in the UK, the rate of obesity has increased among adults in each social class, with the high increasing rate among the lower class. This inequality is stronger for women than men and also more among girls than

(Jonas Minet, Stephen morris 2010). The prevalence of obesity has increased more than twofold in the last 25 years. In 2014, world health organisation (WHO) estimates that 1.9 billions of world’s adult populations are overweight, of which at least 600 million were obese, representing 13% of adult’s population (obesity WHO, 2014). Obesity is no longer a rich country’s problem, but also affects the poor and emerging countries which make it a major public health challenge. ( )

In the UK, the number of obesity cases has more than doubled between 1980 and 2014. The most recent data from the health survey England shows that in 2014 more than half of women (58%) and men (65%) were either overweight or obese (Health Survey England). Hence the government foresight projections suggest that 50 percent of the UK population may become obese by 2050. (Foresight, 2007). To classify an individual to be ‘obese’ is determined by their Body Mass Index(BMI). A value of 30 or more would put an individual in this