Trends and Prospects in Public Health Education: A commentary

Science progresses over time. New approachesare built over old methods and that paves way forprogress. In the field of public health educationalso there has been tremendous growth anddevelopment over the years. These changes havekept abreast with the progress in the field ofmedicine. In clinical medicine, the old school wasbased on asking patients about their symptoms andeliciting signs to make clinical diagnosis andrecommend treatment. In this approach historytaking of the patient was vital and a great emphasiswas placed on clinical acumen.1 This phase canbe called as the first generation approach. Slowlythis approach was replaced by developments inbiochemistry, microbiology and pathology whichled to laboratory investigations that could assist indiagnosis and guide treatment.2 This was the era ofinvestigational medicine and can be called as thesecond generation medicine. The third generationmedicine was influenced by the conducting ofRandomized Controlled Trials (RCTs).3 All drugtesting is based on RCTs and so are a variety ofmedical procedures that have to go through therigors of RCTs which are considered as goldstandards This phase has been called as the eraof evidence-based medicine which is still goingon.4 However, recently with genetic mappingand the advent of genomics and associated fieldslike pharmacogenomics,5 nutrigenetics, andnutrigenomics6 a new trend is being developed inthe form of precision medicine7 which is the fourthgeneration approach in medicine. This approach isalso making concerted use of technology. FormerUS President Barack Obama launched the NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH) Precision MedicineInitiative (PMI) in January 2015.8 Precisionmedicine uses the concepts of personalizedmedicine at a more precise level throughadvancements in science and technology includinggenetics and genomics sequencing (Figure 1).9