ABSTRACT
Public health, like medicine, is concerned with decreasing morbidity (illness) and mortality (death) and with improving the quality of life. However, in contrast to medicine, which responds with diagnosis and treatment for sick, injured or abused individuals after a disease or injury has occurred, a public health approach seeks to prevent disease and injury, by making changes that will affect entire populations. Early public health approaches to problems were based on responses to infectious diseases, such as cholera and bubonic plague, and focused on the interplay between the infectious agent, its host (the person harbouring the disease) and the environment. As public health has been applied to address interpersonal violence, it has provided an alternative to a strictly criminal justice approach that, like medicine, tends to give more emphasis to addressing the problem in individuals after events have occurred. Public health is increasingly being recognized as providing a powerful systematic approach focused on the prevention of violence through social and environmental changes at the population level.
