An editorial by Dr. Gulzar Shah, associate dean for research, discusses the topic: answering the call to integrate health care and public health and proposes that situation is more favorable for integration of the two traditionally siloed fields now than ever before. The editorial attempts to provide contextual background to the study by Drs. Erik Carlton and Paul Erwin in the March issue of Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research, integration of health care and public health (executives). The editorial provides a critical assessment of strategies for integration, identified by the study of Drs. Carlton and Erwin. The editorial concludes that only a large-scale policy creating the interdependence of health care and public health, requiring cooperation from both sides through well-defined incentives for compliance, and disincentives for lack of compliance, will serve as a glue to bring about the desired level of integration. Those policies must attempt to shift the health care focus from profitability and industrial complex approach, conventionally the defining characteristics of health care, to prevention and population health, customarily the turf for public health.

[Photo: Dr. Gulzar Shah]