Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and the Public Health

Public health is commonly defined as ‘the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting healththrough the organised efforts of society’. It centres on promoting and protecting the health of communities, individual citizens and the wider population. 

Epidemiology with its focus on exploring and identifying the determinants of ill-health and why and how some stay healthy, and by extension health inequalities is a core contributory discipline generating evidence on influences, causes and potential ways to break the causal chain, thus enhancing health In a European context where a cross-country average of 3% is spent on prevention one must question why a greater proportion of healthcare expenditure is not targeted and invested ‘upstream’ with a view to addressing the root socio-economic and cultural causes of ill-health and health inequalities, thus, intervening with whom or whatever is ‘pushing them into the river’. Read more>>>>>>>>>>>>>