National Public Health Week is celebrated April 3 to 7. Members of the Community Health Association Students, from Saint Louis University’s School of Public Health, have laid out brochures of information varying in content from smoking to cancer in the lower level of the Busch Memorial Center earlier this week.
“Our main goal is to advertise public health to the community,” said CHAS Secretary Wes Sublette.
“[The general public] tends to think that public health is just a health clinic,” Sublette added.
The public health sector deals with educating and researching a number of medical and environmental issues.
Public health can affect people one way or another.
CHAS president Heather Jacobsen said, “Public health is in our everyday life.”
Exercise, eating habits, smoking prevention are just a few examples.
“Public health is so broad,” said Josh Vest, a CHAS representative. There are five core areas of public health:
biostatistics,
epidemiology,
behavioral,
environmental and occupational health, and
health administration.
“Public health is more on a community level rather than just a doctor seeing an individual,” Jacobsen said.
According to a “Health News” handout from the National Public Health Week booth, the United States Department of Health and Human Services has a plan for the next decade called “Healthy People 2010.”
This list has 10 areas of help including the following: physical activity, overweight and obesity, tobacco use, substance abuse, mental health, injury and violence, quality of the environment, immunization, responsible sexual behavior and equal access to health care.
The objectives are to help people have a long, healthier life.
To get more information about public health or for information about a career in public health, contact Bernie Backer, administration director, at 577-8014.
