Health Promotion International, Vol. 18, No. 4, 407-408, December 2003
© Oxford University Press 2003 All rights reserved
RESOURCE REVIEW |
The New Public Health: 2nd edition (2002)
Frank Baum, Professor and Head of Department of Public Health (Flinders University), Director of the South Australian Community Health Research Unit and immediate past president of the Public Health Association of Australia.
Oxford University Press (OUP) Australia and New Zealand, 624 pp., paperback, A$79.95 (£29.50), ISBN 0-19-551552-8
The New Public Health is an important and current book for health promotion, drawing upon world events that shape our health. It has a multidisciplinary basis, utilizing the knowledge of many professions and disciplines (sociology, medicine, psychology, anthropology, ecology, urban planning, architecture and economics) that inform public health.
The book is divided into eight broad and topical sections, as follows.
- Approaches to public health: defines health and provides a history of public health, including the emergence of the new public health.
- Political economy of public health: covers the social, economic and political circumstance that public health exists within. Economic rationalism and globalization are considered.
- Researching public health: includes a review of the research methods used to study public health.
- Patterns of health, illness and mortality: describes the health status of Australians, with international comparisons and discussion about inequalities in health.
- Unhealthy environments—global and Australian perspectives: questions the future capacity of worsening environments to support human life, with reference to urbanization and population growth.
- Healthy choices—individuals, behaviours and communities: challenges the public health interventions aimed at changing people's lifestyles, such as medical strategies, behaviour change strategies, and community and organizational development.
- Healthy societies and environments: describes alternative economic paradigms and urban environments, and discusses their potential to sustain health, emphasizing locally based action.
- Public health in the twenty-first century: questions the reality of achieving public health's vision, i.e. a sustainable, healthy and equitable future.
This is a brief overview of the insightful and rigorous manner of Baum's work. It does not adequately illustrate the in-depth information contained in The New Public Health, where most chapters are more detailed than expected. For example, the analysis of health-promoting organizations goes beyond the traditional approaches to workplace health promotion to discuss organizational development and change management, and recognizes them as skills required by future health promoters. Another example relates to the description of behavioural approaches to health promotion. The limitations and lessons learned from their implementation are described, as well as the models upon which the interventions were based (e.g. the ‘health belief model’, ‘the stages of change model’ and the ‘health action model’).
Health promoters will find the narrative about the development of the new public health fascinating. Australian milestones in health promotion (community health programmes, health promotion foundations, non-government organizations) are found alongside international ones (WHO Alma Ata Health for All Strategy, Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, Jakarta Declaration), telling a localized story that is not often depicted. Health promoters will, in addition, find the patterns of health, illness and mortality information useful as it covers the social distribution of health and illness through reporting data according to social and economic factors, employment, ethnicity, gender, age and location. The use of Australian data renders the book more relevant to Australian readers, but as Baum's perspective of public health is genuinely global, The New Public Health will certainly also interest international audiences. An example of this can be found in the chapter on globalization and health. In simple language, the complexities of globalization are described and the arguments for and against it summarized, with specific reference to the impact on health and equity. This chapter sets the book aside from other health promotion texts that do not usually acknowledge the larger public health picture.
Helpful features of the book include: (i) a section on definitions of public health keywords; (ii) a section listing international public health websites; (iii) an all-inclusive index; and (iv) lists of recommended readings at the end of most chapters.
The New Public Health provides a comprehensive and accurate account of public health in Australia and internationally. Its theoretical style makes it most suitable for health promotion students and academics. It is not a practical guide to public health.
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