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Public health for the 21st century

When John Snow traced the source of a cholera outbreak to the Broad Street pump in 1854 he drew attention to the role of social and environmental factors in causing ill health in populations – and the foundations for modern public health medicine were laid.

In the 20th century, the links between ‘risky’ individual behaviour and poor health were highlighted through the work of public health doctors like Sir Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill, best known for proving the connection between lung cancer and smoking. Unfortunately the 20th century also saw an increasing divide between the public health and medical professions with increasingly less cross-fertilisation and more specialisation.

Today, social and environmental causes of disease and unhealthy lifestyles remain serious public health challenges in both the developed and the developing world. But in the 21st century, public health also needs to embrace biomedical research and genome-based knowledge and technologies, which are increasingly significant for population screening programmes, reproductive health, infectious diseases, common chronic illnesses, health service design, and preventive health programmes. We believe that there is an urgent need for biology to be prioritised alongside the social and environmental determinants of disease in public health practice, and for increasing connection between public health and mainstream medicine.

Translation and change management

Concerned at the slow rate of return on their investment in basic science, funders now see ‘translational research’ as a priority. But policymakers, academics and research funders frame this need too tightly within the research culture. ‘Translation’ also requires action which enables those who are charged with delivering public policy and health care to both take up research outputs and do something with them. We believe this change management and knowledge brokering activity is undervalued and underfunded.

Our contribution

PHG Foundation thrives on innovation and responding to the opportunities presented by scientific research. We are experts at working at the interface between research and practice, and across specialism boundaries. The sorts of questions we answer are:

What’s the evidence that this innovation works and is useful for clinicians and patients? If there is a lack of evidence, how can it be obtained?
What’s the evidence that populations need this innovation? How is it better than existing methods and technologies?
What’s the evidence that populations want this innovation? Is the perceived need based on sound understanding of the risks, benefits and limitations?
What are the ethical concerns? What safeguards might be needed to protect both society (the public good) and individual consumers and their families (personal interests)?
What might the unintended consequences be?
How can health care systems make funding decisions about which innovations to prioritise and which to reject?
What do health care systems need to change in order to deliver new technologies?

Our work affects everyone. Unlike most medical research charities PHG Foundation’s work targets the health of populations, not groups or individuals suffering from a particular disease. Our work is making a difference to health care and health policy in areas such as:

ophthalmology  |  inherited metabolic disease  |  learning disability  | cardiac genetics   |  prenatal testing  |  safeguards for new diagnostic tests  | genetics education for health professionals  |  the use of human tissue and data in research

We very much value the ability to respond to changing needs as the science develops and we want to ensure that we have the capacity to tackle important policy issues and service development projects as they arise. We also want to ensure that, internationally, less developed health economies are able to share in scientific progress by working with them to develop a ‘toolkit’ to enable them to shape their genetics services according to their population's needs, culture and resources.

Donate

The Foundation relies on supporters to help fund our core activities and to access grants and commissions. Donating to us will mean we can expand the number of projects we take on, but more importantly will help us to ensure that we can continue our work beyond 2012. The pace of scientific advance will not diminish and there is likely to be more work for us to do over the coming decades, not least in ensuring that the benefits of genome-based science are shared by populations worldwide. 

We have already raised £6million from a private donor but we currently need help to fund an annual budget of £1.5million from 2012. We need help in three ways:

• Building an endowment
• Raising revenue funding
• Raising contributions to general funds for projects and infrastructure

Many of the major milestones in the field of public health have been achieved by pioneers whose work was funded by charitable giving. To discuss how you can help please contact Shelley Gregory Jones by email or on 01223 740328. To donate now you can make a donation online or send a cheque (made payable to PHG Foundation) to the address below:

PHG Foundation
Strangeways Research Laboratory
Worts Causeway
Cambridge
Cambs
CB1 8RN