'The science and art of promoting health, preventing disease, and prolonging life through the organised efforts of society'.(1)

Don Nutbeam, in his Health promotion glossary, describes public health as a social and political concept aimed at improving health, prolonging life and improving the quality of life among whole populations through health promotion, disease prevention and other forms of health intervention.

He points out that a distinction has been made in health promotion literature between public health and a new public health for the purposes of emphasising significantly different approaches to the description and analysis of the determinants of health, and the methods of solving public health problems. This new public health is distinguished by its basis in a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which lifestyles and living conditions determine health status, and a recognition of the need to mobilise resources and make sound investments in policies, programmes and services which create, maintain and protect health by supporting healthy lifestyles and creating supportive environments for health.

(1) Reference adapted from Independent inquiry into inequalities in health report, Sir Donald Acheson, London, 1988.