Public health physicians are medical specialists with a duty of care for populations, rather than individuals. They lead multidisciplinary teams to solve complex health problems and make sound evidence-based decisions at a systems level to act effectively to protect and improve the health and wellbeing of whole populations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Māori (tangata whenua).

Public health medicine focuses on prioritising upstream prevention, bringing evidence-informed approaches and leading interventions across the broad determinants of health. Public health physicians mobilise action to protect, promote, and improve the health of populations.

As a contemporary medical speciality, public health medicine recognises the historical and continuing conditions of British colonisation causing inequities in population health and wellbeing in both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Public health physicians work at the interface of population needs assessment, evidence generation, clinical medicine, health administration, and sociopolitical action. They recognise the critical role of the social determinants of health in shaping individual and population health outcomes.

Public health physicians work in multidisciplinary teams across a variety of settings, including:

  • state and federal government
  • non-governmental organisations
  • Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and Māori (tangata whenua) community-controlled peak bodies and service organisations
  • research and educational institutions

Public health physicians provide expert advice and leadership on a diverse range of public health issues by understanding critical structural determinants, interdependencies, risks, evidence, and uncertainty. They are most deeply cognisant of the ‘causes of the causes’ of ill health. They are also trained to identify and address health disparities, expanding focus to strengths-based strategies, sustainability, and proven enablers for positive health improvement.

Public health physicians protect, promote, and improve the health of populations through regulation, programs, and policy, and lead and manage staff in population health settings. They develop and contribute to strategies to prevent disease, including primordial prevention, action on social and physical environments, and individual prevention, such as national immunisation schedules and screening programs. They lead case, contact, and outbreak management. Public health physicians are also trained to communicate effectively with stakeholders and the community for social impact.

Public health physicians have knowledge and expertise in:

Health research, epidemiology and surveillance, including:

  • gathering and assessing scientific evidence to translate findings to real-world policy and practice
  • using quantitative and qualitative analytic methods to describe, monitor, and model disease occurrence and specific health needs within populations and determine the drivers of ill health
  • research ethics, and emerging tools such as network analysis, big data and data linkage, whole genome sequencing, and artificial intelligence (AI)

Systems thinking, including:

  • identifying and incorporating structural and upstream factors acting through non-linear, complex dynamics to population health problems
  • applying concepts and engaging partners to accelerate health equity and prevent the preventable

Communicable disease prevention and control, including:

  • management of outbreaks of infectious diseases
  • cost-effective immunisation policies and practice
  • protecting communities from existing and emerging health risks

Non-communicable disease prevention and control, including:

  • chronic disease prevention and public health management
  • assessing, ameliorating, and preventing risk factor exposure

Environmental health risks, including:

  • health impact and environmental risk assessments to respond to risks, including work hazards
  • global climate change
  • emergency and disaster planning and response
  • regulatory practice to reduce public health risks
  • coordinating accurate disease and early lead indicator surveillance to detect and identify emerging health threats and risks

Broader determinants of health, with a focus on equity, including:

  • identifying social, cultural, economic, political, historical, and commercial determinants of health
  • identifying the relativity of these determinants as factors influencing population and public health
  • identifying how these determinants of health appear as barriers in public health governance, policy, programs, and workplaces

Public health medicine is complex, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and accountable over long-term timeframes to entire societies.

Public health physicians address complex population health needs to engage and lead in:

Responses to urgent and/or evolving public health issues, including:

  • outbreaks of infectious diseases
  • risks to health from environmental exposures, including climate change
  • disasters and other emergencies with a health element

Designing, developing, implementing, operating, and evaluating projects, programs, health services, regulatory bodies, and systems-level interventions for:

  • promotion, maintenance, and improvement of health and wellbeing
  • prevention of ill health and disease
  • assessing the health needs of populations, analysing proposals from economic, equity, and ethical perspectives, conducting priority setting, and planning, implementation, and evaluation
  • gathering, critically appraising, analysing, and synthesising population health information to drive public health action

Analysing, developing, and planning health policy and legislation:

  • providing technical expertise for policy decisions, including legislation and mobilising statutory regulatory actions

Intersectoral and health service planning, operation, and management, including:

  • intersectoral systems and public health approaches
  • healthcare service redesign, including effective strategies to eliminate institutional racism through codesign
  • working across all branches of government
  • high-value health care, quality, and safety

Public health physicians combine their clinical knowledge and experience with the scientific foundations of epidemiology and other disciplines to inform their practice to promote, protect, and improve the health of populations. They collaborate with and enable populations and communities, clinicians, policymakers, and other health and non-health stakeholders to identify and manage health threats using robust, culturally appropriate evidence to guide practice.

To support self-determination by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Māori (tangata whenua), public health physicians exhibit cultural humility and, in acknowledging disciplinary limitations, foster effective culturally informed, multidisciplinary and participatory public health action.

Public health physicians demonstrate the following attributes, behaviours and qualities:

Leadership and accountability:

  • developing effective solutions for population and public health by combining public health disciplines with professional medical insights gained through clinical experience
  • managing complex decision making in rapidly changing environments across a variety of portfolios
  • leading and managing the public health workforce
  • managing uncertainty
  • accepting responsibility and accountability for decisions and actions
  • adopting a flexible and tailored approach, leading, supporting, or linking depending on the needs of the situation and stakeholders
  • acknowledging structural and historical social determinants of health, and mobilising capabilities and strengths at system, institutional, and individual levels, leading as required with discipline-specific expertise

Teamwork and collaboration:

  • working in a variety of teams with health and non-health professionals

Context and cultural awareness:

  • appreciating that population health and the uptake of public health strategies reflects social, cultural, political, and intergenerational factors, and practise accordingly
  • tailoring and adapting roles to unmet needs in context, and amplifying public health action as required for the context of the public health problem
  • acting as cross-cultural partners
  • contextualising and sharing disciplinary knowledge
  • identifying and addressing the impacts of colonisation and ‘white capitalism’ in public health systems on non-white populations, and acting to reverse these impacts
  • seeking and incorporating the knowledge and ways of being, knowing, and doing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Māori (tangata whenua)
  • redressing power inequities that affect health and wellbeing

Knowledge translation and effective communication:

  • bringing expertise in evidence gathering and interdisciplinary approaches to population and public health to initiate and sustain partnerships and increase capacity for more effective interventions, strategies, policy, and practice
  • surveying and analysing disease trends and early lead indicators for health and wellbeing
  • effective risk communication, including using mass media effectively
  • tailoring health information to populations, media, colleagues, policymakers, and others using varied formats, feedback, and evaluation for precise, culturally appropriate, and effective health messages

Quality improvement and safety:

  • regularly reviewing and evaluating their practice alongside peers and best practice standards
  • conducting continuous quality improvement activities

Lifelong learning and continuing professional development:

  • always practising safely and effectively
  • ensuring personal and professional capabilities to practise in culturally responsive ways
  • seeking feedback on cultural safety as a human right for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Māori (tangata whenua)

Mentoring, teaching, and supervision:

  • contributing to professional practice standards through workplace supervision, academic teaching, and collegial fellowship
  • addressing structural impediments to equitable access to training, workforce, and career advancement

Research:

  • supporting the creation, dissemination, and translation of knowledge and practices applicable to health
  • critically appraising research and applying it to policy and practice to improve the health of populations

Ethics and professional behaviour:

  • high standards of personal behaviour
  • treating colleagues and community in a caring and respectful manner
  • acting ethically in all facets of practice

Advocacy:

  • applying medical and population health expertise to earn professional and public trust and advocate for better health for all people
  • working with other organisations and groups who may be marginalised or discriminated against, including as a good ‘ally’
  • recognising when it is most appropriate for the organisation / group to lead and the public health physician to provide support, such as with technical skills, or taking the lead when appropriate in advocacy action
  • leading by example, such as being environmentally responsible

Equity:

  • contributing to positive health for all and the elimination of inequities in health outcomes in collaboration with priority populations
  • recognising the institutionalisation of injustice and acknowledging the importance of the leadership of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Māori (tangata whenua) in ethical research methods and Indigenist enquiry
Last modified: Thursday, 27 November 2025, 12:20 PM