why medical research is so important
Public Health
One of the most important areas of medical research is public health, unfortunately it is also one of the most underfunded. The reason is that private industry has little opportunity to turn the research of public health professionals into a product that they can sell for a profit. As a result most of the money for public health research has to come from the government.
Public health is the practice of preventing disease and promoting health trough society as a whole. In order to do this it is necessary for public health practitioners to know how disease spreads through society. Therefore this is a major area of research in the field. A lot of effort goes into determining how diseases spread and ways to stop the spread. This has been hugely effective in reducing the number of epidemics that have affected society. Where they used to be fairly common, these days they are almost unheard of, in large part this is because of a better understanding of how diseases spread.
The other reason that epidemics are much more rare than they used to be is that many of the most common diseases now have vaccines that make people immune to them. The development of these vaccines is another area of research in the field of public health. The use of vaccines has proved to be a very effective means of keeping people healthy since they work by preventing illness rather than trying to cure it after people are already sick. This is not only more effective but also much more affordable.
One of the areas that a lot of research effort goes into in the field of public health is in determining what kinds of behaviors lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. In the modern world many of our medical problems are largely self inflicted, for example the massive number of people who suffer from heart disease. Because of this public health researchers have been putting a lot of effort into determining just what lifestyle factors lead to health problems. Once they know this they are able to develop programs that are designed to discourage the behavior.
A lot of effort goes into developing new medications and other treatments, however not all of them work as well as would be hoped. One of the areas of study for public health is to determine just how effective medical treatments are. They do this by tracking the outcomes of patients who have had the particular treatment. From this they are able to decide if that approach is working or if it is necessary to find another way to treat the illness. This is an important check on the practice of medicine that helps to ensure that the way that it is being practiced is in the best interest of the patients.
