Confirmation and definition of core concepts of public health in the new era: a literature study

  Objective  To elaborate the core concepts of public health by clarifying the historical connotation and logicality of the concepts and to provide references for defining the definition and connotation of public health in the new era.

  Methods  We retrieved 386 relevant studies published up to January 31, 2018 through systematically searching the Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. Content analysis and co-word clustering were used in sorting and categorizing the information on the public health core concepts; concept map was adopted to assess logical relationships among the core concepts.

  Results  A total of 40 public health core concepts in 12 domains were generalized from the retrieved studies. The first core idea was ‘Health is a basic human right’ presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1946. The major advocate of some of the public health core concepts is World Health Organization, followed by the United Nations and several countries including the United States and China. Concept map analysis clearly demonstrated logical relationships among the core concepts of public health.

  Conclusion  The public health core concepts were established one after another and the concepts have guided the development of public health practice in various countries. Therefore, it is urgent to integrate the latest health concepts into the definition and connotation of public health for health promotion among the public.