Donaldsons’ Essential Public Health, Fourth Edition (PDF)

First published to broad acclaim in the early 1980s, today Donaldsons’ Essential Public Health is widely adopted as the standard text for public health students and practitioners across a range of disciplines. The text brings together, in one volume, the principles and applications of epidemiology, the main health problems experienced by populations and by the main groups within them, the strategies for intervention to promote health and prevent disease, the main themes underlying health policy formulation, and a description of the provision of health services.

This fourth edition marks the biggest change to the book in 20 years, introducing an entirely new schedule of chapters reflecting modern thinking on the scope of public health. While the core elements still cover the position for the UK, each chapter is set in the global health context. Brand new and entirely revised chapters include:

• Quality and Safety of Health Care
• Social Determinants of Health
• History of Public Health
• Non-communicable Disease
• Disability
• Health in Later Life
• Mental Health
• Communicable Disease
• The Environment and Health

In this new edition, the practical, accessible approach encompasses the theory and practice of modern public health in a global and national context. It is essential reading for all students of public health, as well as students of medicine, nursing, health visiting, policy and social science. Those involved in courses of postgraduate study or embarking on a career in public health will find it of great value. The book is also an extremely useful resource for established practitioners – public health doctors, senior nurses, general practitioners and health visitors – and highly recommended for healthcare policy makers and shapers, healthcare service managers, and members of NHS boards and Primary Care Trusts.