This wide-ranging study reviews the state of public health worldwide and presents informed recommendations for real-world solutions. Identifying the most urgent challenges in the field, from better understanding the causes of acute diseases and chronic conditions to reducing health inequities, it reports on cost-effective, science-based, ethically sound interventions. Chapters demonstrate bedrock skills essential to developing best practices, including flexible thinking for entrenched problems, conducting health impact assessments, and working with decision-makers. From these current findings come long-term practice and policy goals for preventing disease, promoting health, and improving quality of life, both locally and globally.

A sampling of the topics covered:

- Health trends of communicable diseases.

- Epidemiology of cancer and principles of prevention.

- Respiratory diseases and health disorders related to indoor and outdoor air pollution.

- Public health gerontology and active aging.

- Migrant and ethnic minority health.

- Public health genomics.

A Systematic Review of Key Issues in Public Health offers graduate students in the discipline a firm grasp on the field as it presently stands, and a clear set of directions for its potential future.