ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that there are at least two meanings or perspectives of public health, both of which can easily be used to justify the collective: the health of the public' and the public of health'. It argues that an integrated approach which refocuses public health as both a means and an end is necessary for understanding how to measure its performance vis--vis what individuals and society may have reason to value in public health. It evaluative space for measuring public health performance consists precisely in the extent to which it provides and distributes opportunities for or actual attainments of health within the collective. The chapter introduces the two meanings of public health. Here take healthcare to mean medical care plus public health. Subsequently briefly address the question performance of what and to what ends? This question draws our attention to the various claims public health can lay to health in terms of its role, functioning or performance.
