Community genetics or public health genetics?

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Abstract
The history of public health is full of words: words defining the area of work, words that are then endlessly redefined or replaced by new words, and old words that come back into fashion again. Think of terms like “social medicine”, “social hygiene”, “community medicine”, “public health” …. The name of this very journal illustrates some of the terminological evolution as it has occurred in Great Britain. It started in 1947 as the British Journal of Social Medicine, at a time when the 19th century term “social medicine” had been revived. “Social medicine” was then perceived to have more positive connotations than the term “public health”, which had become associated with old fashioned hygienic practices. The journal first changed its name into Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine in 1953, and then became the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in 1978, after “community medicine” had replaced “social medicine” as the name for the British public health profession.1 Although the journal has wisely not changed its name a second time, “public health” is again the preferred term in Great Britain, as well as in many other countries, and has largely recovered its positive connotations.

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