However, public health isn’t only a scientific discipline, it also is an applied practice, mostly taking place through specialized state bureaucracies. From national public health agencies to regional or local public health units, public health is firmly embedded in the state administrative apparatus. This operationalization of public health as a function of the state always had to contend with specific challenges related to its relations with governments and politics. Especially since, given the existing evidence on the social determinants of health, taken seriously, few goals would be as politically disruptive and subversive than trying to reduce health disparities. State-run public health bureaucracies therefore always had to carefully thread the line between their disciplinary ambitions and the political acceptability of their interventions. The resulting modus vivendi varied between jurisdictions but generally didn’t involve renouncing to the core tenets described above as much as being selective in their translation into practices and recommendations. As a side note, it is plausible that public health disciplinary fondness for intensely scholastic debates around equity and evidence-based policy stems, in part, from the double-bind its applied arm must contend with