There are strains of strep, for example, which will undoubtedly be resistant to available antibiotics. Insurmountable illicit drug use Public health has never dealt well with illicit drug and alcohol issues. This inability has encouraged strong political support for the criminalization of substance abuse versus treatment for it. Antigovernmentalism compounds the problem. Rampant antigovemmentalist fervor in the U.S. targets, among other things, public health programs such as those for vaccination of children and registration of infant birth defects.
Racial discrepancies are severe in public health.
U.S. public health has a truly sorry racial legacy that has never been successfully addressed. African Americans and, to a lesser degree, Hispanics and Native Americans, are severely alienated from the system, and are least likely to participate in population-based control efforts, such as mass immunizations, HIV education campaigns, STD efforts, well baby programs, etc. The public health discipline has lost its way. This message rested on often contradictory data, and the public eventually stopped listening, or only heeded selectively. Thus, in the U.S., for example, Americans reduced their cholesterol intake but increased their overall caloric intake, becoming a majority-obese nation.