For this introductory Discussion Board, please tell us about you in a paragraph. For your
second paragraph, respond to one of the following questions
How is public health different from clinical medicine?
What types of organizations hire public health professionals?
What career paths involve public health?
Why you want to work in public health? What drew you to this field of study?
Public health Vs. clinical medicine
Clinical medicine and public health are two disciplines that have a number of differences.
These differences are essential to understand to understand their jurisdiction. The differences
between these two disciplines are on the respect of sale, focus, ethics, nature of the science and
education.
Public health focus on the community while clinical medicine focus primarily on the
individual. The public health is concerned about the health of the entire society and therefore,
their strategies focus on the community through initiatives such as polio campaigns, typhoid
among others (Bernhard & Nora, 2011). In line with periods, public health thinks in terms of
generations while clinical medicine is based on single lifetime. The public health will come up
with measures that will have impact on the future generations such as vaccinations to prevent
future health complications.
From the perspective of ethics, the public health aims or advocates for the general good
for the entire community as opposed to the clinical medicine that is more concerned and
PUBLIC HEALTH VS. CLINICAL MEDICINE 2
advocated for the individual people (Bernhard & Nora, 2011). Public health think about the
human rights, social and environment justice when providing health care, while clinical medicine
is more concerned about the individual rights. Therefore, they do not give a lot of weight to
social or environmental rights in their provision of health care.
When it comes to education, clinical medical practitioners, the focus is on the biomedical
model that emphasis on cure as opposed to prevention. In public health, the education is inclined
on the prevention and it incorporates other areas such as epidemiology, sociology, cultural
anthropology and economics among others (Bernhard & Nora, 2011). Evidence of the science is
also different as clinical medicine focus on the double, blind clinical trials an approach is not in
the public health.
Therefore, it is evident that there are noticeable differences between these two
disciplines. Despite these differences, they should aim to enhance and promote better healthcare.
PUBLIC HEALTH VS. CLINICAL MEDICINE 3
Reference
Bernhard, S., & Nora S. (2011). Clinical medicine, public health, and ecological health: a new
basis for education and prevention? Arch Med Sci. 7(4): 541–545.