doi: 10.1093/pm/pnw045
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
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President’s Message
Association: “Public health promotes and protects the followed by increasing diversion of prescription opioids
health of the people and the communities where they and multiple damaging consequences on society at
live, learn, work and play. While a doctor treats people large. These and many other examples teach us that
who are sick [sic], those of us working in public health just as pharmacotherapy often employs a multimodal
try to prevent people from getting sick or injured in the approach that targets several nociceptive pathways,
first place. We also promote wellness by encouraging population-based pain prevention and control benefit
healthy behaviors.” The APHA definition goes on to pro- from addressing multiple dimensions of pain including
vide examples of other public health activities such as its social determinants.
education or tracking disease outbreaks.
Accepting the population-based, public health nature of
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