Improving the world's health through national public health institutes.

Abstract

Globalization is as applicable to health issues as to those of trade and economics (1). The increased frequency of travel, distribution of goods, migration, spread of communications and marketing of new lifestyles have promoted a set of risks and health challenges shared by all countries of the world, despite their varied resources, levels of development, demographics and other important considerations (2). The ability of any one country to solve these new challenges on its own is increasingly difficult and certainly inefficient.In many countries, health authorities have established scientific entities that serve as national resources to prevent and control health problems through research, interventions or the development of policies. There is an increasing tendency to merge these entities and develop more comprehensive public health institutes to deal with the various issues from a public health perspective. We describe the current nature and status of such national public health institutes (NPHIs) and consider the elements that might make them increasingly effective in preventing disease and promoting health in an increasingly interdependent world.An NPHI is an organizational unit of a national govern-ment health ministry (not of a state or province), which serves the whole country as a source of technical public health expertise and would be the unit called upon to respond to public health