Distinction between Public health, Community Health, Social Medicine and Community Medicine

First and foremost, among these four terms the words ‘Health’ and ‘Medicine’ used should be distinguished. We define health as “a complete state of physical, mental, social and (newly added) spiritual well-being not merely absence of disease or injury” and medicine as “the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease”. Thus, these two words separate the meaning of ‘public health’ and ‘community health’ with ‘social medicine’ and ‘community medicine’. 

Public health means the science and art to prevent diseases, to promote health and prolong life of the people through an organized effort for sanitation of environment, education of the individual in personal hygiene, control of communicable diseases, organization medical and nursing facilities for early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, development of social machinery to ensure everyone a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health; so organizing these benefits as to enable every citizen to realize his/her birthright of health and longevity.- CEA Winslow, 1920. In a sense, Public Health is both a body of knowledge and also a means to apply that knowledge.

Community health, a field of public health, is a discipline that concerns itself with the study and betterment of the health characteristics of biological communities. While the term community can be broadly defined, community health tends to focus on geographic areas rather than people with shared characteristics. In some instance, it is used as a synonym for ‘environmental health’.

‘Social Medicine’ is a product of France, Germany, Belgium and other European countries. Firmly based in the medical profession, it reflected a concern with the role of social factors in the etiology of disease, which can be known as “social pathology” and the need for government action in the areas of disease prevention and medical care. It tells human is not only a biological animal, but also a social being, and disease has social causes, social consequences, and social therapy. So it stands on two pillars- medicine and sociology.

‘Community medicine’ became prevalent in the United States as a substitute for ‘social medicine’, since the latter term sounds too much like “socialism”. It is a newcomer which has borrowed heavily from the concepts, approaches, and methods of public health, preventive medicine and social medicine. It is a practice which focuses on health of the community as a whole. As of date, there is still confusion and conflict about the roles, tasks and professional identities in the service as well as the academic worlds of community medicine.

But directly or indirectly, these terms deals with the health of the people as a whole, identifying various causes and risk factors for health related problems and taking actions for solving them. Also, they carry major implications for public health policy. All need the strong foundation of epidemiology and biostatistics.