1.1: Introduction- Public Health in Daily Life
As a student, perhaps you don’t think too often about public health. After all, you are very busy: your alarm wakes you up just in time for a quick shower, before you head out the door to grab coffee on your way to class. Maybe you commute by car or bus to get to campus, where you sit in several lectures with your classmates, with barely enough time to visit the restroom between classes, and grab a snack from the vending machine before you head off to work. At the end of your shift you’re so tired that you decide to skip the workout you had planned and go straight to bed - maybe falling asleep as you “doom-scroll” on social media.
You may not realize it, but public health is involved in almost every minute of your day. If you have electricity, clean water and a working toilet, these all enable you to avoid infectious diseases and environmental toxins. If a classmate or coworker is sick, you may catch their cold and pass it on to your family members or friends. Perhaps you’d like to eat something besides what is available in the vending machine, since you know how important nutrition is for your health, but you are limited by the options in front of you. When you go to work, both you and your employer have to follow specific safety rules - especially if you handle food being served to the public or work with dangerous machinery. Your mental health may be affected by the fact that you feel too stressed to exercise, and instead you engage in “revenge bedtime procrastination” by scrolling on your phone. And nowadays, the health information you come across on social media is a blend of current science with misinformation and disinformation. All of these are important issues in public health.