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This chapter presents a number of concepts from the fields of public health and child health that are useful in the exploration of child public health. The chapter is divided into four broad themes: a) epidemiological concepts; b) concepts related to health improvement; c) concepts relating to disease prevention; and d) concepts relating to the practice of public health and health promotion.

This chapter deals with how to measure and value different degrees of health improvements — in health terms and in monetary terms. Beyond the valuation of improved health per se, the chapter discusses how to value the production gains following people's return to work as a possible consequence of the improved health. Exercises and suggested readings are included at the end of the chapter.

This chapter reviews the policy and organisational changes that have occurred since 1997 following a change of government. New Labour sought to accord a high priority to the health of the public and was strongly committed to putting both health improvement and health inequalities back on the policy agenda. An important symbol of this new policy emphasis was the appointment of the UK's first ever Minister for Public Health. The chapter presents and assesses the various policy developments from 1997 to the present day, including the two public health White Papers of 1999 and 2004 respectively. It also examines other developments affecting public health within this period, including changes in the structure of the NHS, the relaunching of commissioning under the heading ‘world class commissioning’, and the policy shifts towards markets and choice in the provision of health and health care.

This book sets the scene for the series by comprehensively assessing and critiquing the current state of the public health system in England. It places contemporary challenges and concerns in their historical context, tracing the dominant influence of a medical paradigm on the public health profession and exploring how this has given rise to difficulties for those who subscribe to social or structuralist paradigms. The history of public health is marked by struggles between these competing perspectives and recent policy developments have pointed in contrasting directions. This chapter introduces the various issues that will be tackled in subsequent chapters.

Three questions are addressed in this chapter: Does prevention reduce medical costs? Does the U.S. spend too little on prevention? Should it spend more (and if so, on what)? Since much of the evidence comes from cost-effectiveness studies, a brief explanation of how cost-effectiveness analysis is used to evaluate medical interventions is provided. The evidence, from hundreds of studies published over the last four decades, shows that most preventive interventions add more to medical spending than they save, even as they improve health. With prevention, as with so much else, it costs more to get more. Moreover, the U.S. spends considerably more on prevention than commonly thought (see chapter 2 of this volume), even without considering the vast array of preventive activities outside the medical sector. Prevention is not a solution to the health care cost problem. Each intervention needs to be evaluated individually and the goal should be to find the most effective mix of health services, the one that makes the best use of our resources to improve health and extend life, whether through prevention or treatment.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the relation between neighbourhood renewal and health improvement. It highlights the potential of neighbourhoods as places for engagement for addressing health inequalities, not only at the local level, but also in the global context. The chapter also discusses Robert Wright's optimistic argument that we are continually learning how to achieve solutions to the challenges which the growing complexity of societies pose for social policy and governance.

This chapter examines changes in the profiles of completed suicides in Hong Kong and explores the association of suicide rates with changes in the socio-economic environment over the period 1993–2003. It also discusses the impact of the rising popularity of charcoal burning on the overall risk for suicide. Finally, it compares suicide and other leading causes of death, highlighting the significance of suicide prevention to population health improvements in the Hong Kong community.

The De Beaumont Foundation CityHealth project aims to provide city leaders in the United States with both an assessment of their communities and with a package of policy solutions that they can use to improve the health of populations in their cities. In so doing, CityHealth serves as a model for efforts to harness science for action toward improving health in cities. With three out of every five Americans living in cities, policy change in the nation’s most populous urban areas has the most tangible opportunity to impact people’s daily lives and health outcomes. This chapter discusses the goals of the CityHealth project and its successes and challenges, and identifies models that can improve urban health worldwide.