What's new about the new public health?

From its origins, when public health was integral to societies’ social structures, through the sanitary movement and contagion eras when it evolved as a separate discipline, to the Primary Health Care era when the focus on health systems was sharpened, public health continues to respond to society’s changing demography.  Over the past two decades, the overarching framework for global public health has become contentious, with many developed countries advocating a health promotion framework, while the leadership of the World Health Organization and most developing countries seek a return to the Primary Health Care framework. 

 This presentation highlights six previous public health eras, defined more by milestones than by convention (Health protection, Miasma Control, Contagion Control, Preventive Medicine, Primary Health Care, and Health Promotion), in relation to dominant paradigms, analytic approaches, action frameworks, and legacies incorporated into contemporary public health practice.  Also highlighted are the differences between the evolving framework of Population Health and the Health Promotion framework, as well as similarities between the Population Health framework and the revitalized Primary Health Care framework, as detailed in the WHO 2008 World Health Report. The presenter posits that the revitalized Primary Health Care framework is coterminous with the Population Health approach.