All health professionals need an understanding of the determinants of good healthat population level. This has been recognised both nationally in guidance tomedical and nursing schools and internationally by the World HealthOrganization. To help their patients through and beyond the episodes of illnessthat bring them into surgeries and hospitals, doctors need to understand thefactors that propel patients there in the first place. Moreover, as the costs ofhealth care increase across the globe, tomorrow’s health professionalsneed a sound understanding of population-based approaches to promoting healthand preventing ill health.

The first edition of this book was highly commended and the second edition beginswith a section covering core public health knowledge and skills. I am pleased tosee that the first chapter considers public health leadership. This is cruciallyimportant for being, in the jargon of the times, ‘distributed’.All of us working in the UK National Health Service, at one level or another,share responsibility for leadership, whether clinical or managerial, and forensuring that priority is given to preventive care or to improving the curativeservices we offer.

I note that the second half of the book adopts the same life-course approach toimproving population health as was used in the recent White Paper on publichealth: ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’. That too stresses theimportance of multi-sectoral working to tackle the main causes of mortality andmorbidity from infancy onwards.