Define epidemiology and public health: milestones essay
After exploring the supplied websites, define epidemiology and public health in your own words, profile your local public health department, and explain why two public health milestones mattered in the past, present and future, in a 2-3 page APA essay with headings.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 13, 2026
Two definitions that are not the same definition
The first requirement is two definitions, and the common failure is producing one. Public health is the organised effort to protect and improve the health of populations, working through policy, regulation, service delivery and prevention. Epidemiology is a method used inside that effort: the study of how disease and health states are distributed in populations and what determines that distribution. One is a field of action, the other a way of producing the evidence that action depends on. Because you are asked for your own words drawn from your own web research, write two definitions you could defend under questioning rather than quoted sentences, then cite where the understanding came from. The distinction should be visible in the writing, not merely asserted at the end of a paragraph that otherwise treats the two terms as interchangeable. Cite the sources your understanding came from even though the wording is yours.
The local department section is the part that cannot be produced from the supplied links, and that is deliberate. Find your own county or city health department, give its website, and report pertinent details: what it is responsible for, how it is organised, what services it runs, and anything notable about the population it serves. The milestones section asks for two, each explained across three time frames — why it mattered then, what it still means now, and what it implies for the future. Answering only the historical half is the most common shortfall. The formatting brief requires headings for each section, a title page, and APA citations in text and in a reference list. Headings are worth taking literally here: they are the fastest way for a marker to confirm that every one of the four required points has been covered, and a paper without them can lose marks for something the content did address.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Distinguish public health as a field of action from epidemiology as a method.
- 02Locate and profile a local public health department and its responsibilities.
- 03Explain a public health milestone's significance across three time frames.
- 04Evaluate the usefulness of online public health resources including audio and video.
- 05Structure a short paper with headings and consistent APA citation.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Definitions of epidemiology and public health in your own words.
- 02An overview of your local public health department with its website and pertinent details.
- 03Two public health milestones with their importance in the past, present and future.
- 04An overview of additional resources found, including any useful audio, podcasts or videos.
- 05A 2-3 page APA essay with a title page, section headings, in-text citations and a reference section.
Definitions, department, milestones, resources
Defining public health
The organised population-level effort, with its instruments named.
Defining epidemiology
Distribution and determinants of health states in populations, as a method.
Your local health department
Website, remit, organisation, services and the population served.
Milestone one
Why it mattered then, what it means now, what it implies ahead.
Milestone two
The same three-part treatment for a second, different achievement.
Additional resources
Other useful material found, with a comment on audio, podcast or video availability.
The supplied sites, then your own county
Recommended databases
- CDC
- American Public Health Association
- World Health Organization
- Your county or city health department
- The supplied assignment links
Search sequence
- 1.Read the CDC Principles of Epidemiology definition and note how it separates distribution from determinants.
- 2.Read the APHA account of what public health is, for the field-level definition.
- 3.Open the CDC Ten Great Public Health Achievements list and pick two milestones you can source properly.
- 4.Search for your own county or city health department and record its remit, services and population.
- 5.Note any podcasts, videos or data dashboards you find while exploring, for the resources section.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Principles of Epidemiology | Lesson 1 - Section 1
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention · 2024
The standard definition of epidemiology, broken into distribution and determinants.
- 02
What is public health
American Public Health Association · 2025
A field-level account of public health, useful for keeping the two definitions apart.
- 03
Ten Great Public Health Achievements — United States, 2001–2010
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR · 2011
The milestone list the assignment links, with the evidence behind each achievement.
- 04
Principles of Epidemiology | Lesson 1 - Section 10
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention · 2024
How epidemiology is applied in public health practice, connecting the two definitions.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Blending the two definitions so that epidemiology reads as a synonym for public health.
- Profiling a state or federal agency instead of the local department the prompt asks for.
- Explaining milestones only historically and skipping the present and future halves.
- Omitting the additional-resources section, which is a listed requirement.
- Quoting definitions verbatim when the prompt asks for your own words.
- Writing continuous prose with no headings, against an explicit instruction to use them.
Submission checklist
- Epidemiology and public health are defined separately and distinguishably.
- The local department is named, with its website and substantive detail.
- Two milestones each carry past, present and future significance.
- Additional resources are described, with any audio or video noted.
- Headings mark each section and the paper runs 2-3 pages.
- APA in-text citations and a reference section are both present.
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Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
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PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
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