New APHA book focuses on public health nutrition, epidemiology
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* Teddi Dineley Johnson

From obesity to food insecurity to food bioterrorism, the role of nutrition in promoting health and preventing disease has never been clearer. To help public health nutritionists and other health professionals steer Americans toward better health, APHA Press in late 2010 added a new title to its expanding lineup.

“Nutrition in Public Health: A Handbook for Developing Programs and Services, Third Edition,” co-published with Jones & Bartlett Learning, offers a comprehensive, straightforward approach to the importance of nutrition in promoting health and preventing disease. Edited by Sari Edelstein, PhD, RD, the book equips readers with the information needed to assess and implement effective community nutrition programs and services and identify best practices for turning around nutrition-related health problems.

“The book explains the problems we are managing today and the tasks being done to assist in those, and also looks to the future for a vision of what we will be handling and how to do that with our expected resources,” said Edelstein, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at Simmons College in Boston.

Going beyond previous editions, the third edition includes new information on the role of nutritional epidemiology in health and disease. In the first chapter, the book identifies the various types of study designs commonly used in nutritional epidemiologic research and discusses important methodological issues in dietary data collection and analyses. Adding to its cutting-edge relevance, nutritional guideposts have been updated to keep pace with the goals of Healthy People 2020. Released every 10 years, the federal government’s Healthy People agenda equips health professionals and the public with targets that can be used to craft health promotion and disease prevention programs across the nation.

![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/41/1/4.1/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/41/1/4.1/F1)

Divided into eight parts and 28 chapters, the book features the work of 38 contributing authors. Chosen for their expertise and practical experience in the field of public health nutrition, the contributing authors equip readers with in-depth information on an array of topics, including timely new information related to the obesity crisis in America, wellness needs of baby boomers, food insecurity, food bioterrorism and the role of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in public health nutrition. Keeping pace with the constantly changing field of nutrition, the book features chapters on overweight in children, public policy, data management, safeguarding the food supply, marketing nutrition programs — including social marketing — and maternal, infant, child and adolescent nutrition.

Aimed at a broad audience of practitioners and students alike, the book will benefit health professionals, policy-makers and students enrolled in a range of graduate- and undergraduate-level programs, including public health, nutrition, nursing and social work.

“Nutrition in Public Health’ empowers professionals involved in public health nutrition to perform their jobs better, and to make an important impact on people’s health,” writes Teresa Fung, ScD, RD, associate professor in nutrition at Simmons College in Boston and adjunct assistant professor in nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, in the book’s foreword. “But it is also useful to all those in health professions.”

To buy “Nutrition in Public Health: A Handbook for Developing Programs and Services, 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