What Public Health vs. Personal Health Choices Sounds Like

These are not exhaustive lists and one side isn’t better than the other. One person isn’t going to solely make choices or decisions under only one.

There’s clearly the need for overlap. I am not an expert but I do have a Masters of Public Health and what I’m often noticing is a lot of confusion. And I also see our public health systems not communicating well or just adding to that confusion.

Public health often gets lumped into sanitation or restaurants getting a passing grade of cleanliness. Or most recently known as the study of diseases. But public health is truly a lens to see everything and anything.

Everything around us contributes to the health of ourselves and others. Our health is not only comprised of our physical health but it’s our emotional, mental, spiritual, and social health as well. Just as important as sewage being out of our water to keep the public safe and healthy, so does the amount of grocery stores around me impact my health and my communities health, and my choice to not cover my mouth when I sneeze in public impacts others. One of the biggest public health messages that we all may know is to sneeze into our elbows.

If everything contributes to our health, how do you or are you making healthy decisions right now? Being mindful of how we arrive at our decisions is part of healthy decisions. 

Feel free to save these images on your phone and reshare them with your community.

Public Health Sound Like This….

Personal Health Sounds Like This….

Public-health programs started to appear in the 1700s and 1800s. Before that, health was mostly a personal or local issue. But as the populations of cities and countries grew, the number of health problems grew, too. Public health encompasses everything that impacts your health both on an individual level and on a collective level. 

Our health is not only comprised of our physical health but it’s our emotional, mental, spiritual, and social health as well.