Genetics and Health

Aims of the Genetics and Public Health Blog

by Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD on July 9th, 2005

When I started this blog a few months ago, I debated between calling it the “Public Health Genetics Blog” or the “Genetics and Public Health Blog.” Most academic programs, such as the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and institutions, such as the Public Health Genetics Unit, describe the intersection between public health and genetics as “public health genetics.” I’ve wondered many times whether I made a mistake naming this blog.

I suspect that “public health genetics” has become the key phrase because it’s easier to say “public health geneticist” rather than “genetic public health practitioner.” In my case, I trained in the division of genetic epidemiology and can therefore be called a genetic epidemiologist (still a mouthful). There are some special analytic techniques that I learned while in school, but by no means were those skills limited to genetic epidemiologists.

As far as I can tell, the difference between geneticists, public health practitioners, and public health geneticists is mainly their primary area of focus. Not that we have blinders on when it comes to other areas, because as any scientist knows, there are no clear demarcations between scientific fields. The world is not so easily divisible nor understood in categories.

The reason I think about this so much is because I’m trying to figure out what is within the scope of this blog. Thus far, most of my posts are about the roles genes/DNA play in health and disease. Fodder for this blog usually comes from a search for news that include the terms “genes” or “DNA,” not “public health.”

In fact, even though I spent four years at one of the top public health schools in the U.S., I was starting to wonder what public health really is.

The Florida Department of Health defines public health as:

“…the science and the art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and mental health and efficiency through organized community efforts toward a sanitary environment; the control of community infections; the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene; the organization of medical and nursing service for the early diagnosis and treatment of disease; and the development of the social machinery to ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health.” (C.E.A. Winslow)

The mission of public health is to fulfill society’s desire to create conditions so that people can be healthy (Institute of Medicine, 1988).

That pretty much covers everything under the sun.

It would be impossible for me to address all of genetics and all of public health in the Genetics and Public Health Blog and it’s clear that there is a bias here towards genetics and chronic disease (I attended grad school under a cardiovascular disease training grant). So while I will continue to blog about what I know best, I will occasionally introduce topics that are more clearly public health oriented, such as the possibility of bird flu pandemic and its effect on public health.

Is there anything you’d like to see here at the Genetics and Public Health Blog? Please let me know!

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