The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7433 p13-14
6 January 2007

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Public health: why pharmacy counts

Miriam Armstrong, chief executive of PharmacyHealthLink, explains what public health means and how pharmacists can contribute to it

Public health index

SUMMARY

Although the discipline and concept of public health is not new to pharmacy — there are, after all, national strategies to develop pharmaceutical public health in England and Scotland — it appears that a significant number of pharmacists remain either sceptical or uninspired about its relevance to pharmacy practice.

In part this is due to the use of language that does not sit easily with those trained principally in the pure or applied sciences. For example, the most commonly cited and widely accepted definition of public health is “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts of society”. This definition, coined by Donald Acheson, clearly has non-traditional scientific aims, making reference to “the science and art of” and to the equally nebulous term “society”.

Acheson’s definition is not shy about engaging with non-traditional scientific disciplines and refers to human resources as agents of change. To understand public health in this way requires an initial understanding and acceptance of the wider role of the arts, humanities, and the social and behavioural sciences — alongside the pure and applied sciences — in achieving a common good.

Therefore, given its complexity, perhaps it is unsurprising that public health has been described as a vague, aspirational concept. Nobody wants publicly to demean its value because there is broad acceptance of it as an “intrinsically good thing”. However, by being beyond the usual boundaries of challenge, public health also risks losing impact and meaning. So is public health merely an abstract good idea, or are there more tangible, meaningful components to it with which pharmacy can usefully engage?

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