Celebrating the past; awakening the future: the NSW Public Health Forum highlights public health successes in NSW.

Public health has many forms of expression. Public health applies knowledge derived from fields of enquiry that includes epidemiology, sociology, anthropology, medicine, economics, and environmental science. Public health seeks to make healthy lifestyles, healthy policy, and a healthy economy, practical and applied ideals. Beside the natural environment and air and water quality, ozone levels and global warming, the topics of concern to public health also include the built environment—the world of work, housing, education, and employment. Public health engages with the power play of politics, private enterprise, education, race, gender, and social status. It is prodigious in its avaricious appetite; it is frequently critical; it attends to things that should be done that are not being done; it is impudent in wanting to have so many fingers in so many pies; and it is intrusive and it won’t stay still!