The Public Health and Social Change: Implications for Professional Education in Public Health in the United States

Abstract

In the coming decades, health needs are likely to be characterized by great and rapid changes in their nature, in their dimensions, and in their relative importance. The list of forces that will affect them includes: growth of population and changes in its composition, concentration in large urban centers, high levels of social mobility both national and international, increasing size and complexity of organization, new and unexpected technologic developments in every phase of life, greater potentiality for affecting health, and rising expectations of health and fulfilment.

Traditional organizations and methods for dealing with health needs will not prove adequate. The rate of social change requires that health professionals learn quickly to recognize changes in old problems and the emergence of new ones. They will need also to devise sensitive means to evaluate and modify programs and methods. The skills and knowledge of many disciplines will have to be brought to bear in order to identify problems and to find the means to solve them. Disorders arising from technical developments, from new and old agents in the environment, and as byproducts of medical developments, will require an improved surveillance system, new research methods, and new methods of control, in order to produce a cadre of workers equal to the task of discovery, innovation, planning, and leadership. Public health teaching requires emphasis on concepts, on research training and advanced technical competence, and on the ethical and human consequences of professional activities.