Public Health

Public Health is the science of protecting and improving the health and wellbeing of people and their communities through primary prevention. Primary prevention refers to steps and actions taken by individuals and/or community programs to prevent disease onset. Secondary prevention, also an essential component of public health, employs screening programs to detect disease in its earliest stages, looking for people with early signs of illness. In addition, Public Health is concerned with the health of entire populations, otherwise known as population health. These populations can be as small as a local neighborhood like KAUST or as big as a whole country or region.

At KAUST, this work is achieved through HSEs programs and services in the KAUST community; inspection and monitoring programs relevant to recreational water and food; training and awareness programs, promoting healthy behaviors/lifestyles through various communication modalities, responding to incidents in the community, conducting surveillance activities, responding to suspected outbreaks;
At KAUST, our goal is to reduce illness and injury, and disease burden in the KAUST community while making KAUST a healthy and comfortable place to live and play.