Public Health
- Challenging the “upstream” causes of complexed health issues
- Addressing health issues with a multi-layered view of individual, population, and environmental levels
- Speculating the future health with diverse inter-disciplinary research areas and working as a team at the interface between society and medicine
Challenging the “upstream” causes of complexed health issues
At the heart of public health is the need to better understand the causes of disease and to design preventive health measures that intervene at the “upstream”. To achieve this goal, it is important to accumulate descriptive and analytical epidemiological evidence from population-based cohort studies, and then move upstream to try and validate interventions in the populations. We are conducting epidemiological studies and public health activities to realize primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention for complexed health issues.
Addressing health issues with a multi-layered view of individual, population, and environmental levels
The real appeal of public health lies in the fact that it is not limited to the hospital setting, and that it has the ability to look at health at the individual, community, society, and national level, as well as at the planetary environmental level, which includes climate change and the environment on a global scale. In terms of health at the individual and population levels, the conventional framework of “hospital-based medicine” and “health promotion in the community and workplace” are no longer enough to capture the extent of the health issues. Novel approaches will be explored to reach out such as new communities of digital-native generation and digital neighborhoods. In addition, the framework will propose sustainable and diverse approaches to health, such as precision medicine and precision prevention that refine the understanding of disease risk at the individual level, as well as health promotion that takes into consideration the environment and culture on a global scale.
Speculating the future health with diverse inter-disciplinary research areas and working as a team at the interface between society and medicine
Public health is a practical science that has dealt with a wide variety of health issues, even when the causes and mechanisms are not fully understood, while viewing human beings in relation to society and the environment. The Division of Public Health at Osaka University has been leading public health in Japan by addressing the medical issues of each era, e.g., establishing the foundation for the extension of life expectancy in Japan. Medical centers with health checkup and epidemiological research departments, and promoting a national health checkup system. On the other hand, Japan faces new health challenges such as the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, accelerating birthrate decline, emerging infectious diseases, and social disparities. Against the backdrop of social change and diversification of values, conventional approaches alone are no longer sufficient to address these issues, and the next era of public health is required to propose the health of the future. We hope to provide a “place” where diverse and interdisciplinary research teams can come together to think about health and propose future health.
