Public health is the science of preventing disease, injury and premature death through systematic interventions in a community. It includes a range of activities such as tracking disease outbreaks, educating the public about hand washing and vaccination, monitoring air quality both indoors and outdoors, ensuring that food is safe to eat, promoting physical activity, decreasing tobacco and drug abuse and providing needle exchange programs for the prevention of spread of transmissible diseases. It also addresses issues such as the impact of climate change on the global environment, racial and ethnic disparity, social isolation, mental health and healthcare reform.

Most countries have a government agency responsible for domestic public health issues. In the United States, this is the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency has nine divisions headed by an Assistant Secretary of Health, which oversees the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which is one of the uniformed services of the agency.

All interprofessional healthcare team members should consider the broad societal context of their work, which is the field of public health. This will illuminate their individual roles within the big picture of healthcare delivery and help them optimize patient outcomes and experience. It also supports the efforts to reframe public health work towards achieving better health through equity, which is a goal of Health People 2020, the country’s current 10-year national health agenda. The goals for this decade emphasize eliminating health inequities based on race, gender, economic status, sexual orientation and location.