Public health aspires to create a world where we can all live our healthiest possible life, to realize our full human potential. This book aims to serve as an introduction to public health for anyone who is interested in this ideal. It is designed to introduce the reader to the fundamentals that they will need either to build a career in public health, or simply to know enough about public health to inform a career in other sectors. Population health science helps us understand how health is generated in populations. Population health science is the foundation of public health practice that takes that understanding and makes populations healthier. Therefore, the book serves as an introduction to the science of population health, leading directly to the practice of public health. It starts from one fundamental premise: our health is generated throughout our lives and by the world around us. Once we understand that, we can then understand the work of public health through the study of two types of factors: eco-social perspective and life course perspective. The book is organized such that the reader is introduced to these factors in sequence, learning first about the influences across eco-social levels, and then about how health is generated throughout the life course. It then discusses the foundational concepts of public health, including the central roles of prevention, health equity, quantitative methods, how we have to think of population health as a complex system to guide intervention, and how those interventions must engage communities to be effective. The authors have recorded 15 podcasts to illustrate the key points of each chapter. These podcasts are narrated by graduate students of public health and feature case studies pertinent to the chapter themes, most of which appear in the chapter text.
