Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

The Coronavirus Pandemic is giving us an old perspective anew on public health: “health for the people” and “health by the people.” The former deals with institutions’ responsibility in providing public health environment and the latter calls attention to individuals’ lifestyles to improve their health. The current pandemic places this public health perspective under scrutiny. The Coronavirus is not the first case where individuals’ responsibility towards public health has become a focal point. The correlation between one’s behavior and its consequences may be well-established in the case of the Coronavirus. However, individuals’ attitudes towards the public for the sake of public health continues to evade our attention. We pay attention to this void in public health issues. A survey with open-ended questions in April among 22 Vietnamese and 26 Japanese reveals the differences in attitude between them towards the Pandemic, and how they see their responsibility and that of their respective governments in handling the Pandemic. The survey also suggests the differences in their orientations towards the public: to the Vietnamese, the public is the sphere of government responsibility, freeing them to engage in promoting their personal interest. Whereas to the Japanese, the public is a sphere where they refrain themselves from becoming its intruders. The recent history of each country offers convincing explanations for the two different orientations towards the public. As such, the research calls attention to the role of education in orienting people to “health” in public health and to the “public” in public health.