Preventing disease or helping the struggle for emancipation: does professional public health have a future?

English The professional practice of public health can be understood to derive from two contrasting models – one which emphasises epidemiology and evidence from randomised trials and sees effective preventive treatments and interventions as its major purpose, the other which derives its methods from critical social science and sees empowerment, materialist analysis, and emancipatory action as its main purpose. These two models are compared and contrasted, and a case for their synthesis is argued in the face of a misconceived redefinition of public health made recently by the UK Secretary of State for Health.