Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management

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Summary: A focused book on public health management and practices
Review: This recent contribution to public health literature focuses on management and administrative strategies for entire communities rather than specific programs or organizations. The 800-page text is divided into four Parts dealing with conceptual and structural elements; operational issues; administrative processes and strategies, and applications of these to public health administration. There are thirty chapters contributed by fifty-four public health experts from local and state agencies, medical, public health and nursing schools, universities, non-government organizations, laboratories, and five chapters written by CDC-based professionals. Each Part has an introduction by the editors, followed by a series of chapters, with individual pr¨¦cis of the chapter¡¯s focus, along with telegraph-style, boxed-chapter reviews, and a complete set of historical and contemporary references. The chapters are enriched by carefully chosen figures, tables and ¡°exhibits¡±, which are crisp, attractive, and interesting to view. The figures, tables and exhibits have been carefully chosen by the authors, culled from selected articles and books; others have been created by the editors to support the written text. They leaven the written narratives, and provide a further continuity to the logical flow in chapter chronology. A brief Epilogue, rationalizing population management, is followed by a fifteen page glossary with over 250 public health definitions, terms, abbreviations, neologisms, and Americanisms, provides the reader with a Rosetta stone summary of both old, established expressions, as well as newer public health terminology. Public Health Administration is freed from constraints of previous textbooks on preventive medicine and public healthþuwhich were required to discuss topics like nutrition, biostatistics, epidemiology and communicable diseases. These efforts often drove the textbook, resulting in all too brief summaries of these subjects, while providing a cramped backseat to what otherwise would have been devoted to a full discussion of public health management. Despite the fact that the fifty-odd contributors come from a spectrum of public health disciplines and locations (over twenty different states and Canada), the editors have worked hard to produce a single narrative voice, and have eliminated redundancies and conflicts between various authors. Individual chapters include standard analyses of core U.S. public health practices, the editors have generic issues (e.g. Leadership) applicable to any country¡¯s structured health system, and have the largest chapter in the book (62 pages) devoted to Disaster Preparedness and Response, which includes ten pages (with many 2000 references) devoted to bioterrorism. The text would be an excellent resource for academics involved with teaching, as well as their students. Local, regional and federal public health practitioners would also benefit from a one-stop shopping for information on public health, as would the newly arrived post-graduate student, about to embark on a career in public health. For the historically-minded, the 1993 expanded edition of George Rosen¡¯s classic A History of Public Health (published in 1958), syncs quite nicely with present day and future challenges presented in Public Health Administration. This textbook should find its place on a shelf, along with other focused classics like the newest editions of the CDC¡¯s Control of Communicable Disease Manual, (CCDM), and Donald Hunter¡¯s The Diseases of Occupations. Public Health Administration Principles for Population-Based Management compares favorably with the most recent edition of Maxcy-Rosenau-Last Public Health and Preventive Medicine. But at nearly half the price, and not encumbered with obligatory discussions of preventive medicine disciplines, this new textbook should stand the test of time. John S. Marr, MD, MPH Senior Lecturer, Department of International Medicine New York Medical College Graduate School of Health Sciences Valhalla, NY January 15, 2001