What's it all about

What is the New Public Health?

Health has traditionally been seen as the absence of disease and the concern of the medical profession and health care system. Research into health and disease over the last thirty years and particularly in affluent societies where threats of widespread disease, poor sanitation and unclean water have been removed, has shown that there are strong connections between the environments in which we live and work and our health.

Health is now seen as a positive sense of wellbeing, not only the absence of something wrong. The World Health Organisation defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing.’ 

The new public health works from this view of health as a whole environment connected to every part of our lives. Health is seen and measured by happiness, equality of opportunity and wellbeing including mental, social and emotional health as well as physical.

The idea of the new public health - both radical and commonsense - is that that health is everywhere. The foods available in the supermarket, the option to walk or take the car, the rise of the Internet and the game console, the design of suburbs and cities, to the amount of control we have over our working life, all influence our health. 

Health in turn can determine the wealth, growth and development of societies, and every person’s quality of life.

The new public health pays attention to the connections between economic inequalities, social problems, environment and health and sees these as opportunities to build in healthy choices at every level in public policies, organisations, city and transport design, food production and education.

Key to this approach is public education and health promotion, empowering individuals to make better health choices through knowledge.