In stark contrast to individual-level approaches to health promotion, ecological approaches target multiple influences of health behavior, because changing individuals and their behaviors may be temporary without corresponding changes to the environment in which they are embedded. Using an ecological approach, supportive environmental factors are considered when designing effective and sustaina...

While we have completed health assessments for many years, this report represents the first time that healthcare stakeholders – hospitals, medical centers, foundations, non-profit organizations, health leadership groups and public health agencies – joined forces to assess our region. This partnership resulted in an informative and comprehensive examination of health indicators used to identify ...

The exciting and rapidly advancing dialogue between health and human rights is helping to define more clearly the challenges and perspectives of a new approach to public health. Public health has a complex intellectual and operational history, within which there is a long and respected tradition of understanding health as linked with various social realities, expressed or analyzed through occup...

New psychoactive substances (NPS) have completely modified the drug scene and the current landscape of addiction. Synthetic substances, such as substituted or synthetic cathinones, also known as « legal highs », are often produced and used to mimic the effects of controlled drugs such as cocaine, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy), and methamphetamine. The overwhelming majority of sy...

Why a new journal? Because it's a Journal of Public Health Research. When we decided to launch a new journal, we thought a lot about the topics readers would like to see and read about. The most important thing was that the new journal had to fit the modern concept of public health. It immediately became clear that, whereas the concept of health is rather difficult to interpret, the public heal...

Animal diseases are known to be the origin of many human diseases, and there are many examples from ancient civilizations of plagues that arose from animals, domesticated and wild. Records of attempts to control zoonoses are almost as old. The early focus on food-borne illness evolved into veterinary medicine's support of public health efforts. Key historical events, disease outbreaks, and indi...

The funding of population-based public health services (health protection, health promotion and disease prevention) has received little attention in the international literature on health reforms, and yet these services are of fundamental importance to the health of populations and to the economy. This article provides justification for health policy-makers placing more emphasis on the level of...