TRENDS
Together at Last! Now is a good time for medicine and public health to put their acts together
Prior to COVID-19, did you know the names of the medical officers of your state or county public health depart-
ments? Did the physicians you call on know their names? It was the lack of coordination between medical providers and public health that led to failures in testing and vaccination during the pandemic, writes healthcare expert Atul Gawande in an August 2021 New Yorker article, “Costa Ricans Live Longer Than We Do. What’s the Secret?” In many cases, public health departments “were forced to launch their own operations, such as drive-through testing sites and stadium vaccination clinics – and they had to do so from scratch, in a mad rush.” More proof, he says, that the U.S. healthcare system “is designed for the great breakthrough – not the great follow-through.” And it’s been that way for a long time.
Separate ways From the start of the 20th century, public health and medicine developed as separate disciplines, notes the American Public Health Association (APHA). Medical and public health practitioners were educated in separate schools and upon graduation, the two disciplines went their separate ways. 22
January 2022
•
www.repertoiremag.com
But with escalating healthcare costs, continuing growth in the ranks of the uninsured, increasing emphasis on healthcare quality and outcomes, chronic disease, ever-widening health disparities, and outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, greater collaboration between the two professions is not an option, but a pressing mandate, concluded researchers from the
