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The COVID 19 crisis offers unique opportunities and poses special challenges for practical and theoretical public health. Management of the pandemic was initially dominated by virologists, supported by epidemiologists who did not always exercise the necessary scientific rigour. Expertise in interdisciplinary health sciences and complex considerations from a broader public health perspective, however, did not have noticeable impact on the COVID 19 debate and even less on the strategies for containing the pandemic. Public health is universal and more than health security or health protection. As an explicitly political discipline, public health takes a far-reaching socio-political approach and must not be reduced to biomedical aspects. Medical and biotechnological solutions alone will not meet the challenges of the corona crisis. The analysis of the political, economic, social and ecological determinants that led to the crisis is indispensable for the sustainable management of the pandemic. In order to improve population health and reduce the risk of future outbreaks of dangerous infections, a comprehensive policy is needed that also addresses hegemonies and power relations., Competing Interests: Die Autorinnen/Autoren geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht., (Thieme. All rights reserved.)

Global health is increasingly present on the international policy agenda and in transnational fora such as the G7 and G20 summits. This trend is as overdue as it is desirable, but the scope and content of the discussion remain rather limited. For safeguarding and improving people's health all over the world, global public health requires coordinated and coherent action. Epidemic preparedness is certainly necessary but refers only to a small segment of global health and will remain insufficient as long as the social and health-system-related causes persist. "One Health" is an important strategy for fighting antimicrobial resistance but without overcoming crucial economic determinants, it will be impossible to solve the problem. Health systems strengthening, the third major field of global health, requires a sound mix of adequate financing, infrastructure, human resources and societal factors for expanding access to health for all. All proposed and desired improvements in global health need complex crosscutting approaches for being effective and sustainable; however, the steps taken by political decision-makers are rather small and do not address essential causes. Global public health means more than tinkering with the symptoms., Competing Interests: Die Autoren geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Context: After decades of providing a dense network of quality medical care, Germany is facing an increasing shortage of medical doctors in rural areas. Current graduation rates of generalists do not counterbalance the loss due to retirement. Informed by international evidence, different strategies to ensure rural medical care are under debate, including innovative teaching approaches during undergraduate training., Issues: The University of Magdeburg in Saxony-Anhalt was the first medical school in Germany to offer a rural elective for graduate students. During the 2014 summer semester, 14 medical students attended a two-weekend program in a small village in Northern Saxony-Anhalt that allowed them to become more familiar with a rural community and rural health issues., Lessons Learned: The elective course raised a series of relevant topics for setting up rural practice and provided students with helpful insight into living and working conditions in rural practice. Preliminary evaluations indicate that the rural medicine course allowed medical students to reduce pre-existing concerns and had positive impact on their willingness to set up a rural medical office after graduation. Even short-term courses in rural practice can help reduce training-related barriers that prevent young physicians from working in rural areas. Undergraduate medical training is promising to attenuate the emerging undersupply in rural areas.