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We have taken every care to ensure that drug dosages and related medical advice in this book are accurate. However, drug and disinfectant dosages can change and are updated often, so always double-check dosages and procedures against a reliable, up-to-date formulary and the given drug’s documentation before administering it.

Public Health: Caring for communities and populations

First published in January 2019 by Bettercare. This version produced on 26 February 2025.

Text © Miranda Voss 2018
Illustrations © Graeme Arendse 2018

ISBN (print edition): 978-0-620-82500-9
ISBN (international paperback edition): 978-1-795-39836-7

Excluding content explicitly credited to others, this book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License. For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0.

This licence means you may share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the following terms:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • Non-Commercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
  • No Derivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

For any other uses, please contact Bettercare.

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      1. Home
      1. How to use our books
      2. Buy printed books
      3. About Bettercare
      4. FAQs
      5. Contact us
      1. Preface
      2. Acknowledgements
      3. Introduction
        1. About Bettercare
        2. Why decentralised learning?
        3. Free Bettercare Online Learning Platform
        4. Learning programmes
        5. Format of the courses
        6. Contributors
        7. Updating the course material
        8. Contact information
        9. Registration
      4. Part 1: What are the problems?
        1. 1 Sources of information about communities and populations
          1. Unit 1: Assessing the health of communities and populations
          2. Unit 2: Demographics and sources of population health data
        2. 2 Measuring health problems
          1. Unit 3: Measures of disease occurrence
          2. Unit 4: Descriptive statistics
      5. Part 2: What are the causes?
        1. 3 Analysing the causes of health problems and socially determined health
          1. Unit 5: Unravelling the causes of ill health
          2. Unit 6: Socially determined health
          3. Unit 7: Migration, urbanisation and globalisation
        2. 4 Environmental health
          1. Unit 8: Air quality
          2. Unit 9: Water and sanitation
          3. Unit 10: Climate change and health
        3. 5 Nutrition
          1. Unit 11: Nutrition
        4. 6 Important health problems and their causes
          1. Unit 12: Infectious disease
          2. Unit 13: Non-communicable disease
      6. Part 3: What are the solutions?
        1. 7 Responding to health risks
          1. Unit 14: Prevention
          2. Unit 15: Healthcare systems
        2. 8 The governance and organisation of healthcare in South Africa
          1. Unit 16: The legal and regulatory framework in South Africa
          2. Unit 17: Policies
          3. Unit 18: Types of health facilities in South Africa
        3. 9 Access to healthcare
          1. Unit 19: Access to healthcare and the ‘right to health’
          2. Unit 20: Primary healthcare and South Africa’s district health system
        4. 10 Finance and procurement
          1. Unit 21: The financing of healthcare systems
          2. Unit 22: The supply chain and stock outs
        5. 11 Health information systems
          1. Unit 23: Health information systems
          2. Unit 24: eHealth and mHealth
        6. 12 The health workforce
          1. Unit 25: Human resources for health
          2. Unit 26: The healthcare team and interprofessional care
          3. Unit 27: Work stress and burnout
        7. 13 Approaches to difficult problems
          1. Unit 28: Advocacy
          2. Unit 29: Managing adherence
          3. Unit 30: Major incident planning
      7. Part 4: How well are the solutions working and can we do better?
        1. 14 Measuring the performance of health services and programmes
          1. Unit 31: Types of performance measures in health services
          2. Unit 32: Adverse event monitoring
          3. Unit 33: Cost analysis
          4. Unit 34: Programme monitoring and evaluation
        2. 15 Improving the performance of health services and programmes
          1. Unit 35: Quality and quality improvement
          2. Unit 36: Tools for reducing wastage and working more efficiently
          3. Unit 37: Change management
          4. Unit 38: Implementation gaps
      8. Resources
        1. Further reading and public health learning
        2. Useful organisations
        3. A holistic patient assessment and management using the ICF framework
      1. How to use our books
      2. Buy printed books
      3. About Bettercare
      4. FAQs
      5. Contact us

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