The UK government’s reforms of the NHS and public health system require partnerships if they are to succeed. Those partnerships concerned with public health are especially important and are deemed to be a ‘good thing’ which add, rather than consume, value. Yet the significant emphasis on partnership working to secure effective policy and service delivery exists despite the evidence testifying to how difficult it is to make partnerships work or achieve results.

Partnership working in public health presents the findings from a detailed study of public health partnerships in England. The lessons from the research are used to explore the government’s changes in public health now being implemented, most of which centre on new partnerships called Health and Wellbeing Boards that have been established to work differently from their predecessors.The book assesses their likely impact and the implications for the future of public health partnerships. Drawing on systems thinking, it argues that partnerships can only succeed if they work in quite different ways. The book will therefore appeal to the public health community and students of health policy.