Abstract
Public health is a communal enterprise, for the benefit of the community, not for any one individual. So public health needs to be funded communally, usually by the government, and can require the participation of all. One of the responsibilities of public health is to control epidemics. For this it needs to have a public that supports its required standard procedures. Control of epidemics are a particular problem because they are caused by living organisms, which can increase exponentially. Time is of the essence when confronting a potential epidemic as is war when attacked by a foreign power. The government should organize epidemic response as it does a military response. To maintain trust in public health, I suggest that public health should establish clinics to promote the good health of the population, particularly clinics concerned with the health of babies and their mothers and clinics concerned with the maintenance of health of individuals with chronic health problems.