America has an astonishingly narrow view of “health” — and that was reflected in the rhetoric from this season’s presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

When the topic of health was broached, which was rare, the focus was mostly on health care — access to doctors, hospitals, and medicines to treat people when they’re sick. There was very little discussion of public health, the goods and regulations that give us clean air and water, safe roads, and mosquito control. Unlike health care providers, public health officials work on preventing illness and injury. They devise plans to prepare for those increasingly frequent pandemic threats, like Ebola and Zika, and regulate tobacco use to give us smoke-free environments.

Last night, the closest the candidates got to a conversation about a public health issue was a brief debate about gun control. “I think we need comprehensive background checks,” Clinton argued. In the September 26 debate, the only mention of obesity — one of the most pressing public health challenges America is currently facing — came with Trump’s fat-shaming reference to a “400-pound hacker.”

Instead, the debates largely centered around Trump’s tax returns, Clinton’s emails, and the national deficit, with a tiny slice of health care, and public health was mostly ignored.

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