National Public Health Resources in the United

¶ … national public health resources in the United States. We will be describing the history of the public health department as well as other significant things regarding this subject. Our main focus besides at the national level will be at the Santa Clara County which is in the state of California. Finally, we will attempt to differentiate between public and community health which is related to our chosen agency of Santa Clara.

History of Department of Health in U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services started in 1798, at that time it had few finances as well as resources in terms of employed personals, medical equipments and so on. It later on became more effective with the aid of different acts such as Quarantine act of the year 1887. The department introduced children's services early in the twentieth century. The overall Public Health Service in the United States was restructured during 1944 and as a result we see today a service sector which oversees many different other departments such as the Agency for quality and healthcare research (AHRQ), centre for disease prevention and control (CDC), centre for Medicaid and Medicare services (CMS), Food and Drug agency (FDA), the federal occupational health (FOH), the (NIH) National institute of Health, Administration on Aging and so on.

The U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) commissioned corps has over six thousand public health professionals, their sole purpose is to deliver public health promotion as well as disease prevention programs. These professionals often serve at different frontlines across the globe in order to fight against different diseases and sometimes operate at dire environments.

There have been many changes made in the recent era in order to make the national public health service more efficient, most notably after the year 1999 towards the emergency response. Here many medical teams are trained in order to deal with the latest medical or related threats, so far these teams have successfully dealt with issues such as terrorist attacks of 2001, anthrax attacks of 2001, earthquakes, response towards oil spill in Deepwater Horizon in 2010, hurricanes Rita, Katrina, Gustav or Ike. Some of the overseas responsibilities performed include response towards Tsunami in Japan in 2011, tsunami and earthquake in Indonesia and so on.

Public health resources in Santa Clara

Before going into Santa Clara County's public health service, let's briefly assess the difference between public health and community health and see how it relates to our chosen agency. A public health sector focuses everywhere, here the main attention is given to all those topics or issues which might hit the general public such as any outbreak of a disease like swine flu or any other related issue. Here the focus is much broader and wider and covers a vast array of different subject matters which falls under the heading of healthcare, the key word here is "bigger picture."

Let's say a survey regarding the overall health conditions of civilians is done which belongs to a particular area or which are known to be exposed to any sort of disease, such work can be done and accumulated only with huge funding and expertise required. "The public health sector is meant to do all of the big jobs of keeping an eye on the living conditions." (Webster, 1998).

"The community health division can be called as a sub-division of the public health sector" (McCray, 2003), here the main work involves focusing on doctors, nurses or any other related professional and how they act according to the needs of their community.

"The community health division follows the guideline given to it by the public health sector which oversees its community" (Levy, 2006), "the community division is responsible for providing the needs to its community since it better understands the requirements of that specific place." (Gostin, 2002). In the case of our chosen county of Santa Clara, we see that the overall public health system is one of the best in the world.

Let's first have a brief overview of different aspects regarding the county. Here, it is important to note that the Bay Area has always been the main attraction for new immigrants from different parts of country like the Dust Bowl migrants in 1930's, it is these individuals which bring more prosperity towards the region in terms of trade, technical expertise, business entrepreneurs and so on. Other fields also include electronics manufacturing, packing plants and others.

Since Santa Clara is located at the heart of the Silicon Valley in California, it is home to many well-known and famous Hi-tech corporations and individuals associated with such firms demand the best in healthcare. The overall public and community health settings in this county is ideal for every inhabitant of the area. Its emergency ambulance system is one of the fastest and the most efficient in the developed world, its overall wages of different medical personnel and related employees is among the best in the United States.

If we can focus on the salary of an average physician in the state of California then it was recorded to be more than ninety one thousand dollars per annum, this means about forty five dollars per hour, comparing this to the national average which is about eighty five thousand per year shows a visible difference. Much of this is dependent mainly on the living conditions of Santa Clara county. These are the reasons why the average life span of a person living in Santa Clara is very good.