ABSTRACT
Background and purpose of research in public health entomology Federal and state-level policy makers and public health practitioners must implement public health approaches as well as medical treatments for the overall good of society. However, research into these public health approaches lags far behind research on new therapies, biotechnology, and medical devices. In fact, biomedical research gets about 90% of governmental funding, compared to about 10% for public health research.1 Scientific research is important in public health, mainly for providing useful information for community health programs and results of interventions. Such research sheds light on diseases and conditions in the state or territory and associated demographics associated with them. Health officers would be ill-advised to initiate expensive programs for diseases or other problems in their state without knowing what those diseases are, where they are, and in what numbers. This is descriptive research. In addition, basic research is sometimes needed to identify new or emerging pathogens in one’s state, their ecology, and modes of transmission. In some cases, this requires experimental research-hypothesis testing-but the purpose is the same: shedding light on the public health threats and conditions within the state or territory.
