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Te pai me te oranga o nga iwi
Health for all people

An Overview of Public Health

Date of publication: March 2002


Tihei Mauriora!
E titiro kau ana ki nga maunga tapu o te
motu tena koutou
Ki a tatou mate huhua haere koutou i runga o
koutou waka wairua.
Tatou te hunga ora ki a tatou
Tena rawa atu koutou katoa
Breath of Life !
Greetings to the sacred mountain of the land
To our dead, farewell on your journey to the spirit world
The living to the living
Greetings
Greetings
To you all
This resource provides an overview of public heatlh for:
  • the boards of District Health Boards (DHBs) and advisory committees
  • DHB staff and providers
  • organisations involved in public policy development
  • non-government organisations (NGOs) that provide health and related services
  • anyone interested in health issues and services.


This resource describes:
  • the concept of public health and the types of services and activities that come under the public health umbrella in New Zealand
  • the interface between public health and other parts of the health and wider social sectors.


    “The major gains in health in this [20th] century have been attributable largely to the impact of public health and disease prevention, rather than to medical interventions.”

    The future of public health. Bloom B.R.
    Harvard Public Health Review, Fall 2000.




Document availability

This publication is available in hard copy. To order a copy email moh@wickliffe.co.nz or call 04 496 2277. Please let us know your name, your physical address and how many copies you would like.

It is also available on this website in PDF format below or you can read it online.

publichealthbooklet.pdf(2453kB)

This publication has been converted to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Here is a link to information on downloading and viewing PDFs.





Contents

What is public health?

What is the Māori perspective on public health?

What is the difference between public health and publicly funded health?

What is the relationship between public health and personal health?

What sorts of things does the public health sector do?

What’s special about public health services?

What makes a good public health strategy?
    Example of a well-planned strategy

    Auahi Kore: Reducing the harmful effects of smoking – Towards a tobacco-free New Zealand
Do public health programmes work?

Who makes the key decisions about public health services?

What sorts of organisations provide public health services?

Who are the people who work in public health within the health sector?

Is there an international model on which public health planning is based?

What is the relationship between the Treaty of Waitangi and the Ottawa Charter?

How should the Treaty of Waitangi and the Ottawa Charter translate into public heath practice?

What does this mean in terms of public health planning and implementation?

How do we achieve an improvement in the health of populations, communities and individuals?



Related information

Public Health

Māori Health publications


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