Public Health

Public health is all around us, even when we don’t realize it.

Clean drinking water. Safe food. Vaccines. Seat belts. Air quality standards. Smoking restrictions. These are just some of the ways public health efforts have prevented illness, injury and death, often without most people giving them a second thought. While medicine generally focuses on treating an individual who is sick, public health looks at whole populations and asks a different set of questions: What is making people sick or harming them? Who is most affected? And what can we do to prevent it?

For journalists, covering public health means looking beyond the exam room to understand the policies, systems, environments and social conditions that shape our health. This beat will explore a wide range of issues, from infectious disease, vaccination and antibiotic resistance to mental health, addiction and chronic disease, as well as the health effects of climate change and the environment. It will also give journalists the tools they need to make sense of population-level data, evaluate evidence and explain how decisions by governments, institutions and communities affect our health.