Public Health Public health is at the center of the human side of sustainability. It works on all scales (individual, household, community, state, region, global), and becomes entangled in issues of urbanization, migration, refugees, industrialization, modern agriculture, climate change, energy use (especially fuelwood), as well as air, land, and water pollution. It must involve itself in human adaptations to, for instance, climate change and infectious disease, nutrition, sanitation, vector breeding and migration, pathogen transmission, and virulence. Public health officials must deal with uncertainties, benefit/cost analysis, policy disputes, technology access of patients, and funding priorities as well as triage when multiple crises occur. Public health is sometimes viewed as any medical aid to a population regardless of funding sources; and sometimes as medical aid that comes through government or philanthropic funding (versus private health care).
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