title: [Public health: knowledge, practice and training].
abstract: This paper presents a discussion regarding Public Health's main challenges: knowledge of it, professional practice and training human resources. It begins by recognising Latin-America's unequal and polar socio-sanitary context and the sanitary field's myriad single referents, paying special attention to essential public health functions, the Millennium development goals and the Latin-American Association of Public Health Education. Emphasis is placed on three components: knowledge of public health (levels, domains, disciplines, temporality, dimensions and complexity), social practice (state-public, collective general practice and group professional practice) and human resources' training (professional, technical, training and up-dating). An essential challenge is then identified for each of these components and a set of proposals to be launched from the Latin-American Association of Public Health Education is outlined (interchange, partnerships and advocacy).
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco.
authors.forename: Edgar C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Jarillo-Soto
authors.forename: Oliva
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: López-Arellano
mesh_terms: D011364:Professional Practice; D011634:Public Health / Q000193:education*