ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief history of public health and identifies the main historical phases that have led to the emergence of what is termed the ‘new public health’. It provides a framework with which to analyse developments leading to the emergence of a contemporary public health perspective. The extensions of the definition of public health were created by shifts in values occasioned by particular circumstances. The discipline basis of public health developed from an early focus on sanitary science to a latter-day perspective that incorporated medical science. The public health movement is said to have had its origins in a fundamental change in values that accompanied new concepts of State responsibilities—concepts that preceded the French Revolution and became institutionalised by it. The changing nature of public health roles and responsibilities, particularly over the past 160 years, has inevitably led to conflict between public health authorities and a range of other institutions and groups.
