Public health is about more than just treating individual illnesses

History · Published 25 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: While medicine focuses on healing the person in front of you, public health looks at why they got sick in the first place. It is a systemic approach to safety and wellness that targets the environments where we live, work, and grow up.

Public health is defined by its focus on collective well-being rather than individual clinical care. Its primary mission is to help people stay healthy and protect them from external harms. A critical component of this work is addressing 'unfair differences' in health between different groups, aiming to reduce systemic inequalities that prevent certain populations from achieving optimal wellness. The field operates across three distinct domains: health improvement, health protection, and healthcare services. Health improvement involves proactive measures like promotion campaigns for nutrition, physical activity, and vaccinations. To defend against crises like chemical accidents, natural catastrophes, or disease epidemics, health protection serves as a proactive and reactive barrier.

Finally, healthcare services focus on the infrastructure of medicine itself—ensuring that care is evidence-informed, high-quality, efficient, and equitable. Because public health addresses the 'wider things' affecting life, it requires a diverse workforce. Professionals may specialize in niche areas like tobacco control or public health intelligence, or they may work as generalists overseeing broad portfolios across all three domains. The goal is to ensure that resources are used wisely and fairly to improve the overall wellbeing of the population.

Dr. Terry Dwelle, the current President and Educational Director of the North Dakota Public Health Training Network, brings over 40 years of experience to this field. His professional history includes clinical plus public health roles throughout Central and East Africa, Latin and South America, Eastern Europe, and the United States, showcasing how vast these systemic medical hurdles are.

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