Ecology and preventive medicine: problems of interaction

The authors made an attempt to show the differentiation and integration of preventive medical Sciences and ecological disciplines as a complex dialectical process characteristic for the development of the science of the late 20th - early 21st centuries, and to analyze the methodological links of preventive medical Sciences with numerous ecological disciplines developed in recent decades. The article deals with the processes of formation of new ecological disciplines studying the system “environment - human”, a comparative analysis of preventive medical and environmental Sciences on their goals, subjects and objects of study. The study of the environmental impact on human health was shown to be carried out by already formed medical Sciences, and primarily preventive orientation (General hygiene, Social hygiene, Communal hygiene, Food hygiene, Occupational health, Military hygiene, Radiation hygiene, etc.), having accumulated considerable experience in the areas of knowledge studied by them. Disciplines arising from the differentiation of the environment and studying the preservation of life and health, in essence, duplicate preventive medical Sciences, which inevitably leads to the repetition of the path and does not give the desired results in the increment and development of new scientific knowledge. At the same time, the process of interaction and unification of efforts of preventive medical Sciences and environmental disciplines can make a significant contribution to the successful solution of such important state tasks as the preservation of public health and environmental protection from the negative impact of anthropogenic factors. The application of a systematic interdisciplinary approach in the interaction of preventive medical Sciences and environmental disciplines involves the presence of scientific facts, a complex of deep knowledge in the areas under study, the development of a number of theories, as well as the analysis of environmental and medical problems.