Public Health Resources - Essay Example

APHA is the oldest public health organization in the country. The mission statement is a good definition of public health. That statement says, "To protect all Americans, their families, and their communities from preventable, serious health threats and strives to assure community-based health promotion and disease prevention activities and preventive health services" (apha.org). This public health site strives to do just that. The information readily available on the site and easily usable covers all of those factors in a way that is easily understood by the public.

They also publish the American Journal of Public Health and a newspaper called The Nations Health. HHS.gov is the website for the Department of Health and Human Services and is the principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially those who are least able to help themselves. This site is also very easy to use and forewarns Americans of things that may come in the near future that may affect them. All of the sites talk about H1N1 but there are other things here such as the amount of water one might want to store for emergencies. (hhs.gov).

The most recent addition to information on the site is the need to be prepared in your own home with food, water, and light in case of a natural disaster. CDC has a mission statement that also is the very description of public health. It states that they will provide collaboration and expertise as well as information and tools that the people need to protect themselves against infections and disease, injury and disability. In reviewing the site, this writer found that to be quite true and in the future will spend more time reviewing this site (cdc.org). There are many diseases still there that most people believe are gone.

It is noted for example that there is an article on this site providing information about the plague that is present in some prairie dogs in the Southwest. Additionally, the World Health Organization takes all of this information one step further and mingles the information from this country with the information from the world in general. This site is truly the epitome of public health when we talk about all of the public or the world and in today’s global society everything is near. It takes no time at all for an infection in Africa to become an infection in the United States.

The WHO organization educates the public of the world on conditions that deserve their attention including such things as childhood obesity which according to the site is a worldwide problem. In conclusion, there are many public health organizations and the definition of public health is much larger than most would think. However, the information available to the public is vast including everything from how to prevent heart disease to how to prepare for emergencies. The goal would be for people (public) to pay more attention to the information that is available to provide for a world that is safer and a public that is healthier.