Health services research is now a major topic in the training of public health workers, and its main focus is defining and demonstrating quality and cost-effectiveness in health care programs. Finding ways to test the efficacy and safety of these treatments is increasingly the responsibility of people trained in epidemiology and biostatistics and mindful of public health. Public health research and practice continue to be greatly influenced by developments in information technology. Apart from the sheer ease and speed of computing, technology is allowing us to link various sources of data and to pose questions that would have been impossible until recently. The enormous power to collect, store, link, and analyze data means that students of public health must be trained in computing, quantitative methods, and statistical software.
Public health is to a large extent a calling.
Whether you are a physician, nurse, health educator, or epidemiologist, working in public health means having a concern for the welfare of society as a whole, and being something of a moral crusader. For example, it has taken 50 years of campaigning and numerous research studies to convince people that smoking is harmful to smokers as well as those exposed to cigarette smoke. A proposal is currently in development in Iowa to ban smoking in public places. Public health is a multi-disciplinary approach to the prevention and control of unhealthy conditions and diseases. It also involves confronting the ethical and legal problems surrounding change and health problems in general.