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The seventh edition of a cornerstone public health textbook has arrived, bringing new perspectives and updated content to the classroom. With a deep understanding of the complex landscape of public health, the new authors of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health have infused the textbook with contemporary issues and innovative teaching approaches, ensuring it will remain an essential resource for students and professionals alike.

The new text, available now from Jones & Bartlett Learning, addresses some of the most pressing challenges in public health today, digging in to critical topics such as artificial intelligence, climate change, and health misinformation. The authors reorganized chapters and added new content to enhance the learning experience and better prepare students for their future careers.

Watch the video below for highlights of our recent conversations with the authors. Then read on for more detail on the content and scope of the seventh edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health.

Building on a Strong Foundation

The authors approached the revision of this highly regarded text with an appreciation for the foundation laid by the author of the first six editions, Mary-Jane Schneider, PhD, a longtime public health educator and dean at the State University of New York at Albany.

“I'm proud of the work that went into this book, but it was a much easier endeavor because Dr. Schneider had really set up such a foundational text,” said Andy Moralez, PhD, MPH, CHES, one of the three authors of the new edition. “I was assigned this book in my first year of graduate school, and then I used it when I was an affiliate faculty just learning how to teach. And I have continued to use it.”

The expertise and specializations of each of the authors sparked the addition of new topics that are especially relevant today — including artificial intelligence, climate change, and the prevalence of misinformation about health.

"We were able to add new content, update statistics, and add more dimension to certain topics," said Jessica S. Kruger, PhD, MCHES, the lead author for the text. Kruger is director of teaching innovation and excellence and a clinical associate professor in the Department of Community Health and Behavior at the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions. “As students read this book, they will be able to think about how these current issues are impacting public health and their future jobs.”

The content updates and additions are designed to broaden the perspectives of students pursuing public health careers and prepare them to meet the needs of their communities.

“I think the book feels very fresh now,” said Moralez, an educator whose research collaborations have focused on the intersection of public health and clinical medicine, improving patient care and community health, and interprofessional communication. “I think it feels very up to date, and it's also more challenging than I think it was in previous editions. It asks tougher questions in terms of what's really happening in the field of public health.”

Streamlining the Teaching and Learning Approach

Another innovative change in the textbook is a reorganization of chapters to better align with academic teaching schedules and enhance the learning experience. This restructuring allows for depth and flexibility in course design, to accommodate various teaching frequencies and styles, the authors said.

“We've streamlined the book into 17 chapters, coming down from 31 chapters,” Kruger said. “As faculty members who have taught this class multiple times, we felt that making the chapters a little denser and fitting them into a 16- or 17-week schedule will be helpful for faculty as they teach it.”

She emphasized that the chapters the authors combined in the new edition can still be taught separately. “Depending on the instructor's preference, they could be teaching a larger section of the textbook during one week or break that into smaller sections, depending on how they feel is best to teach their class,” Kruger said.

“We wanted to keep in mind faculty who may be teaching one time a week, or to make that an opportunity to cover some of the more dense chapters within a two-time-a-week class. Some folks may be teaching three times a week, and I think you could also separate the material relatively easily to fit with that course schedule.”

Find instructor resources and the book’s table of contents, or request a preview copy, here.

New Content Addresses Pressing Issues in Public Health

The seventh edition introduces four new chapters, focused on research methods, COVID-19, climate change, and mental health. The authors decided to expand and update the COVID-19 pandemic information provided in the digital add-on chapter in the sixth edition and develop a chapter on climate change because they consider these pressing issues that will continue to challenge public health.

"Climate change has become one of the major challenges for public health worldwide, and the COVID pandemic is not the last pandemic we are going to see," Kruger said.

The chapter on climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic provide up-to-date information on these issues and encourage students to consider the interconnectedness of global health issues, said coauthor C. Eduardo Siqueira, MD, ScD, MPH, a professor emeritus of environment and public health at the University of Massachusetts School for the Environment. (Siqueira recently wrote about climate change for the Jones & Bartlett Learning blog. Find that article here.)

Siqueira said he views the chapters on COVID-19 and climate change as interconnected. And with good reason.

“COVID-19 reflects what may be the pattern we are going to be seeing in the future,” he said. “This pandemic is also related to changes in the environment. So, these two chapters are connected. They’re probably the two most important challenges for public health in the 21^st century.”

The authors developed a completely new chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic because they felt it was important to help public health professionals understand it and become prepared for similar events in the future, Kruger said.

“We felt that this new chapter would be a great way for students to learn about the pandemic that occurred … and to apply that information to perhaps our next pandemic,” she said. “We also included a chapter on climate change, … because we feel that this is something that’s going to incredibly impact public health. We see this every day with vector-borne diseases that are continuing to rise.”

Shifting the Narrative to Encompass Health Determinants

One of the notable education threads in the seventh edition is a stronger emphasis on social and cultural determinants of health, a shift that Moralez believes is crucial for understanding health outcomes.

"We really wanted to make sure that there is a clear understanding … that a lot of what happens in terms of our health outcomes are not necessarily under the control of the individual," Moralez said.

By integrating information about the influence of social and cultural determinants of health, the book encourages students to think beyond individual behaviors and consider the broader context of health, he said.

“It was important to include a footnote that the writers of this new version stand by the fact that race is a social construct,” he said. “When you read the statistics throughout this text, it’s clear that this doesn't happen because someone is Latino. This doesn't happen because of how they identify. Health happens because of the conditions. It’s not race that determines health. It's racism that determines health.”

For additional context, Moralez offered the example of geographic location. “Your zip code is just as predictive of your health as the behaviors you engage in,” he said. “In fact, where you grow up and your access to resources — or the lack of resources — determine the behaviors that you participate in, whether those are protective to health or whether they are adverse to your health. We wanted to make that very clear.”

The authors framed the textbook content around determinants of health external to the agency of a human and the need to view health in terms of the life course from conception to death, Moralez said. To deepen students’ understanding, the authors embedded storytelling techniques designed to resonate in meaningful ways.

“We added metaphors and stories that were not in the previous editions, to help students contextualize what we're getting at,” Moralez said.

Enhanced Resources for Instructors

For faculty, the new edition provides comprehensive instructor resources to facilitate the transition to the updated content and highlight where it aligns with the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) foundational competencies for graduate-level public health programs.

"The instructor resources show which chapters are new and the information in each chapter that highlights components faculty might see as foundational domains for CEPH competencies," Kruger said.

The faculty resources also include thought-provoking questions and materials that instructors can adapt for quizzes, exams, and assignments. Moralez said these carefully developed supports will enhance the teaching and learning experience. Kruger added that the book can be used for undergraduate or graduate students who are new to public health.

Inspiring a New Generation of Public Health Professionals

The authors said that as they developed the content outline and wrote the chapters for the seventh edition, their goal was to inspire readers with the possibilities offered within the field of public health.

“I hope that after reading this book, readers walk away with a sense that there is so much that encompasses public health,” Kruger said. “There are so many diverse opportunities for a public health professional. I hope that readers walk away with a sense of wonder and awe of what they could do next.”

Siqueira expressed his hope the new edition will lead students to understand that public health is a transdisciplinary approach to issues that face populations.

“Instead of considering this as another discipline within the health sciences, we’ve tried to show that it's actually transversal,” he said. “It cuts across most areas of our society, from poverty to income inequality, to social distribution of diseases, infectious disease, and chronic disease.

Siqueira said today’s approach to public health is more expansive and encompasses the health of humans and the planet. “We hope that this book will be useful for the new generations of public health practitioners, to help them develop a broad and holistic view of public health,” he said.