As a reminder, we are back to our reset world where there are no diseases. Sure, on the second day someone will catch a cold. On the other hand, cancer hasn’t had a chance to develop.
And, we are thinking about the role of public health.
Second (after biostatisticians and epidemiologists get to work describing the new health of the population and monitoring any new emergence of disease), many public health experts would focus on a central tenet of public health: prevention.
Aside from genetics and other factors outside our control, public health experts would help policymakers, corporations and families do what they can to help everyone avoid diseases. One way to prolong everyone’s good health is to reduce or eliminate factors in the environment that cause illnesses.
An example of a real policy that indirectly helps prevent diseases is the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990. One aim of this law is to move attention and resources beyond waste management and pollution control to pollution prevention, source reduction and more. Where chemicals and particles released into the environment increase the risk of diseases, like asthma or cancer, this kind of prevention would slow down or prevent their negative impact… and the resulting medical treatment.
Copied from the EPA website:
The Congress hereby declares it to be the national policy of the United States that pollution should be prevented or reduced at the source whenever feasible; pollution that cannot be prevented should be recycled in an environmentally safe manner, whenever feasible; pollution that cannot be prevented or recycled should be treated in an environmentally safe manner whenever feasible; and disposal or other release into the environment should be employed only as a last resort and should be conducted in an environmentally safe manner.
TO BE CONTINUED…
