[The public health profession in Spain: an urgent challenge to strengthen its practice].

The recent health crises have highlighted the weakness of public health structures in Spain. The causes are, among others, the scarcity of economic resources and the delay in their institutional modernization. In addition, there is the weakness of the training processes and the employability.

[Future National Public Health Agency: an opportunity for the public health system in Spain].

The creation of a national centre for public health, with adequate resources, will make it possible to face the public health challenges of the present and the future in our country. To this end, the proposed state agency, should hold functions based on advanced public health organizational schemes, while linking with the sustainable development goals. The coordination of a national public health strategy built on a collaborative network of networks would also be essential, as developing an innovative, benchmarked and prioritised public health communication strategy, among other tasks.

[Who, how and what: community health and local administration].

The thirteenth SESPAS (Spanish society of public health and health management) report is structured in three blocks Who, How and What about community health and local governance. In the who block the main agents working in community health are described: communities, health care system, and local government; and how their relations and implication in community health have evolved; which concepts are used; what is the current situation and which challenges they have. The How block contains methodological views, oriented towards implementation of community interventions, based upon participatory tools, development of networks and review of evidence and evaluations to build a National Strategy of Health Promotion of the Spanish Ministry of Health, welfare and consumers affairs including suitable deontologic principles.

[Assets: from maps to territory. SESPAS Report 2018].

In recent years, health asset maps have become increasingly important tools in the field of health promotion. They are being incorporated into the daily practice of many healthcare workers, in individualized care in consultations (through social prescription), and in groups or community development processes. It is necessary to reflect on how the asset maps are being produced, analyzing how the different stages of the process can be involved in their construction.

[Hygeia and virtue or remembering Protagoras: dialogue on community health ethics. SESPAS Report 2018].

A dialogue between ethics and public health on the moral implications of the promotion of community health in which the importance of respecting autonomy and contributing to the empowerment of the community with which it collaborates is highlighted; in addition to the appropriateness of an explicit commitment that sets out the limits of collaboration and the opportunity for a specific deontology.

[Cuts, austerity and health. SESPAS report 2014].

Since 2009, the economic recession has led to cuts in spending on social welfare policy and in health care. The most important risks to health depend on negative changes in social determinants. Notable among these determinants are unemployment and the large proportion of people at risk of poverty, which affects 30% of children younger than 14 years.

[Inappropriate use of health resources and the trivialisation of medicine].

One of the main problems of our health care system is its excessive use. The most evident results of this misuse are the waste of resources and the iatrogenic consequences that are not justified by any expectations in health improvement. Among the possible causes of this inappropriate use, the trivialization of medical practice should be emphasized.

[The putative link between the MMR vaccine and autism and refusal to vaccinate].

The paper of Wakefield et al. in The Lancet, triggered a negative reaction to the MMR vaccine, even though it was just a series of cases and the association between vaccination and autism could well be anecdotal. However, it was found that this association was spurious, not only because of hidden biases but also to alterations of the data and other improper behavior of the two authors that they were expelled from medical council.

[Common competencies and contents in public health in graduate programs].

Objective: To identify fundamental public health competencies and contents in nursing, pharmacy, teaching, medicine, human nutrition and dietetics, optics and optometry, labor relations and human resources, and social work in graduate programs and to formulate proposals for their improvement.

Methods: The workshop on Public health contents in graduate programs in the XXI Menorca Public Health School was organized as follows: eight groups were set up, coordinated by 37 Spanish university teachers participating in the workshop and selected through key informants and snowball techniques. Two studies on public health professional competencies and the participants' own graduate programs were used to discuss public health professional competencies and contents and establish recommendations to improve public health programs.

[Changes in public health: the role of the state and the autonomous governments. SESPAS Report 2010].

The first responsibilities in health passed on to the autonomous governments were those referring to public health. However, the decentralization process has not been accompanied by an updated management of the collective efforts to promote and protect health, or by a greater weight of public health within the system. To carry out such a reform, public health authorities and the central and autonomic administrations must assume their corresponding roles.

[Working conditions of public health workers in the primary care in Catalonia, Spain].

Objective: To describe the working conditions and tasks of health workers in the health training unit of family medicine in Catalonia, Spain.

Methods: Cross-sectional study.

Results: Fifty-three public health workers were located.

[The use of the Framingham-REGICOR equation in a primary care centre. Impact on primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases].

Objectives: To evaluate the adequacy of cardiovascular primary prevention by calculating cardiovascular risk (CVR) with 2 different equations and to evaluate the economic impact of the resulting drug expenditure. DESIGN. By means of a transversal study of all the new cases of lipaemia diagnosed, patients were classified in 2 CVR categories (> or =20% and <20%).

[Public health and public health systems sustainability].

Public health and healthcare originally started out separately from one another in the past, having later further developed taking different paths in modern times. The major development the health systems underwent in the last half of the 20th century entailed a heightening of the individual standpoint and a division of these two approaches despite the attempts made to bring them together as of the WHO Alma-Ata Conference in 1978. The waning of rationalism and other social phenomena had a hand the collective or population-oriented focus being focused on to a lesser degree in Public Health, but these trends also gave rise to a growing problem of rationality in individual healthcare and sustainability in the public health systems.

[Screening induced by health services: impact and consequences. Ethical issues].

The main aim of screening is to identify people with an increased probability to benefit from preventive interventions, generally from secondary prevention but also from primary prevention activities. The goal is to facilitate early diagnosis and treatment in order to modify positively the prognosis (the former case), or to recognize people exposed to risk factors which increase the incidence rate of disease, and then to prevent the disease (the latter case). Good intentions are not enough to achieve good results in terms of effectiveness, safety, efficiency or equity.