Public health and selected professions related to health protection

Abstract

Public health is complex and not always properly understood. Most often, public health is associated with the activities of organs and institutions in relation to combating epidemic threats, fighting alcoholism and drug addiction. However, these are only three selected tasks, ranges of activities that are part of broadly understood public health. Nowadays, no less important (and perhaps even more important task) is to prevent diseases and loss of health through proper education of the society. Currently, an important task should be to raise the awareness of the society, and not only to identify factors threatening health. More space and time, both in school and social programs, should be devoted to disease prevention and creating conditions conducive to proper development. One of the ways to achieve success in this area is to conduct activities in the field of “public health” or “new public health” expansively, such as health promotion, development of medical staff — which is related to the need to introduce new medical professions to the labor market in health care and to define the legal framework for their functioning. Activities related to the development of human resources in health care should start with the adoption of laws on the professions of a dietitian and cosmetologist. Regulation of the situation (not only) of these professions, resulting in increased trust in people performing these professions, undoubtedly falls within the scope of public health tasks specified in the Public Health Act.