New APHA book introduces college undergraduates to public health
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* Teddi Dineley Johnson

Right now, two distinct movements are sweeping across the public health landscape. One is the effort to answer the question: “What is public health?” The other is an initiative to bring public health education to all of the nation’s undergraduate students, which continues to gain momentum as more colleges and universities offer introductory public health courses to their undergraduate students.

But almost a decade before either movement took flight, a visionary professor at the University of Albany, State University of New York, seeing the two efforts forming on the horizon, decided to write a groundbreaking textbook that would address both. With the first edition of “Introduction to Public Health,” published in 2000, author Mary-Jane Schneider, PhD, positioned herself at the forefront of a movement to encourage more undergraduate schools to teach public health.

![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/40/7/3.3/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/40/7/3.3/F1)

“Public health should be part of everybody’s education,” Schneider said of the textbook, which is co-published by APHA and Jones & Bartlett Learning, a publishing partnership that builds on an APHA recommendation that universities and colleges incorporate core introductory public health courses into their curricula. “It is a basic function of government. To a large extent, people don’t know about public health, but it is certainly important to everybody’s life.”

The third edition of “Introduction to Public Health” rolled off the presses this summer into a public health landscape replete with new issues and new developments. Drawing on timely events and real-world examples, the updated text provides undergraduates and graduates alike with informative discussions of the current issues and obstacles presently confronting public health practitioners and policy-makers. And with the same engaging style that brought acclaim to the first two editions, Schneider again equips students new to public health’s concepts with a highly readable overview of the field.

“The third edition brings things up to date,” said Schneider, who satisfies her appetite for current events by poring over mountains of newspapers and scientific journals each day. “The way I write, I like to make it readable and interesting to the general reader, so I keep up with current events tied to public health and I present stories to illustrate issues in the news.”

“Introduction to Public Health, Third Edition” uses nontechnical language to introduce new approaches to research and data collection and explain the strategies and methods used for measuring, assessing and promoting public health. Discussions about a host of headlines in public health are provided, including food and drug safety, tobacco regulation, women’s health, conflicts of interest in drug trials and environmental health controversies. New sources of injury are explored, including harms caused by texting while driving, and a discussion of new developments in infectious diseases has been updated to include information about pandemic flu and H1N1.

As in previous editions, Schneider opens the third edition with a discussion built around the question: “What is public health?”

“It’s a combination of science and politics,” Schneider, who is an APHA member, told *The Nation’s Health*.

To buy “Introduction to Public Health, Third Edition,” visit [www.aphabookstore.org](http://www.aphabookstore.org). For more information, e-mail apha{at}pbd.com.



*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association