Preface to the Second Edition vii Acknowledgements viii About the Authors ix How to Use Your Textbook x Part 1 Introduction 1 1 Introduction to public health 2 2 Public health old and new 4 Part 2 Epidemiology and evidence-based practice 7 3 Incidence and prevalence 8 4 Risks and odds 10 5 Hierarchy of evidence and investigating causation 12 6 Bias, confounding and chance in epidemiological studies 14 7 Standardisation 16 8 Ecological and cross-sectional studies 18 9 Case-control studies 20 10 Cohort studies 22 11 Trials (experimental studies) 24 12 Systematic reviews and meta-analysis 26 13 Diagnostic tests 28 14 Developing clinical guidelines 30 Part 3 Assessing population health 33 15 Health and illness 34 16 Demographic and epidemiological transitions 36 17 Health information 38 18 Measuring population health status 40 19 Determinants of health 42 20 Lifestyle determinants of health 44 21 Social determinants of health 46 22 Environmental determinants of health 48 23 Inequalities in health 50 24 Health needs assessment 52 25 Maternal and infant health 54 26 Health of older people 56 Part 4 Improving and protecting health 59 27 Disease prevention 60 28 Principles of disease transmission 62 29 Communicable disease control 64 30 Surveillance 66 31 Immunisation 68 32 Screening principles 70 33 Screening programmes 72 34 Health promotion 74 35 Changing behaviour 76 Part 5 Health economics 79 36 Economic perspectives on health 80 37 Economic evaluation 82 38 Economic perspectives on measuring health-related outcomes 84 39 Economics of public health problems 86 Part 6 Effective healthcare 89 40 Healthcare systems 90 41 Planning health services 92 42 Improving services 94 43 Healthcare evaluation 98 Self-assessment questions 100 Self-assessment answers 102 Appendix: practical issues in conducting epidemiological studies 105 Further reading 107 Index 108.