Donaldsons’ Essential Public Health has been in continuous print for 35 years, evolving through successive editions. This unrivalled record of success for a textbook of public health shows the enduring appeal of its content, style, and accessibility to generations of students and practitioners. For many of today’s national and global public health leaders, the book was their guide as they began their careers, their benchmark as they passed their examinations and professional accreditation, and remains their companion as a source of reference and refreshed knowledge for teaching and practice.

The book brings together, in one volume, the main health problems experienced by populations and by the key groups within them, the strategies for promoting health and preventing disease, the principles and applications of epidemiology, the main themes of health policy, and a description of health service provision.

This fourth edition marks the biggest change to the book in 20 years. For the first time it sets each key subject area in a global health context, whilst retaining its traditional strength in covering population health for the United Kingdom. New and revised chapters for this edition include:

Health in a changing world

Communicable diseases

Non-communicable diseases

Social determinants of health

Quality and safety of healthcare

Mental health

Disability

Health in later life

Environment and health

History of public health

The content is wide-ranging and written in an accessible and engaging style. It covers topics as diverse as: the story of the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa; the elements of tobacco control policy; the health impact of climate change; the global health organisational architecture; the concept of health; the new paradigm of public mental health; the biological pathways that link to the health effects of social deprivation; the ideal of universal health coverage; the essentials of immunisation; the basis of healthy ageing; the historical events that led to the germ theory of disease and the Victorian sanitary revolution.

This new edition is essential reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of public health, medicine, nursing, health policy, social science, and public sector management. Those embarking on a career in public health will find it of great value throughout their professional life. The book is also an extremely useful resource for established practitioners in primary care, doctors, senior nurses, health system managers, healthcare policy makers, civil servants in ministries of health, and members of boards of health organisations.