Human ecology and public health.

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Abstract
There is a need to reexamine the concept of human ecology and to assess the influence of such an inquiry upon the practice of public health. In the 1st place, human ecology must be irrevocably separated from animal ecology. Secondly, it is important to think in terms of the ecosystem to define human ecology in terms of relationships between a human community and its biophysical environment, and in terms of the interrelationships between man and his economic, social, and political organization. Beyond that, the idea of human ecology is merely a semantic substitute for sociology and anthropology unless it introduces some new elment into man''s search for self-understanding. This new element rests on the assumption that in human ecology man deals actively with the product of his consciousness, culture, in such a way as to transform its very nature. Thus human ecology is here conceived fundamentally as action-oriented in a sense of the activity of man to transform both the world and himself. In this context, public health assumes a humanistic character based upon a broadening of its sphere into selfconscious, planned action striving to so alter specific conditions of human life that disease and stress are prevented from inhibiting the striving toward a proper utilization of the untapped resources of human beings.

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