This fifth edition of the ever-popular Oxford Textbook of Public Health has been thoroughly updated, and remains the ultimate resource on the subject of public health and epidemiology. Two new editors, Mary Ann Lansang and Martin Gulliford, join the established editor team of Roger Detels and Robert Beaglehole, representing a truly global outlook from four continents. The contributors are drawn from across the world, offering perspectives from vastly different health systems, with ranging public health needs and priorities. With contributors including Dr Margaret Chan, Director of the World Health Organization, this book offers a globally comprehensive picture of modern health. The book retains its approach of dividing the complex, dynamic subject of public health into three topics. First, the scope of public health is covered, looking at the development of the discipline, determinants of health and disease, public health policies, and law and ethics. The second volume focuses on the methods of public health, including the main science behind the discipline - epidemiology. Environmental factors, information systems, and social science techniques are also considered.Finally, the third volume puts the theory into practice, examining specific public health problems and options for prevention and control. As well as identifying these issues by system or disease, there is also an awareness of the unique needs of particular population groups. The book concludes with an analysis of the functions of public health, and a look at the future of public health in the 21st century. The picture of world health has moved on dramatically since the publication of the fourth edition in 2002. This new edition includes substantial new material on the impact of private support of public health; globalization; water and sanitation; leadership; community-intervention trials; disease and infection; gene environment interactions; obesity and physical inactivity; urbanization; minorities and indigenous populations; health needs assessment; clinical epidemiology; and the practice of public health. This ensures that the Oxford Textbook of Public Health remains the most comprehensive, accessible text for both students and practitioners in public health and epidemiology.