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As they brainstormed their approach to updating the classic public health text Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health, Jessica S. Kruger, PhD, MCHES, and her coauthors quickly coalesced around a central mission. In addition to updating the book content in key areas, the three public health experts wanted to meet the needs of educators in a definitive way — by providing a clearer correlation to accreditation standards set by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH).

“We wanted to ensure that we were aligning the text and the content with current CEPH competencies criteria, so that it's easier for schools to evaluate student knowledge,” Kruger said in a recent interview with Jones and Bartlett Learning. “Programs are required to show that they're not only teaching this material, but also evaluating it. And it's difficult to evaluate students on something that's not in their textbook.”

The new CEPH content correlations reflect the authors’ commitment to helping faculty in public health programs meet the complex needs of teaching today. Instructors in public health programs can preview the crosswalk in this transition guide.

This article highlights key revisions in the seventh edition and explains how the new text provides instructors with a more thorough framework for teaching and evaluating students in undergraduate and graduate public health programs.

Comprehensive Revisions and New Topics Are Hallmarks of the Seventh Edition

The authors’ vast teaching experiences influenced the revision process in meaningful ways, resulting in a user-friendly text educators will appreciate. This collaboration by public health educators with a range of interests and experiences also produced diverse educational strategies and the introduction of new subject areas.

Kruger and coauthors Andy Moralez, PhD, MPH, CHES, and C. Eduardo Siqueira, MD, ScD, MPH, ensured that the seventh edition is both comprehensive and contemporary. The updated text provides teaching resources that more directly integrate current competencies, easing challenges that some faculty face when trying to line up textbook assignments with accreditation standards.

“I teach the introduction to public health course, and one of the sections about qualitative and quantitative data had always been a bit of a challenge because there wasn't information on qualitative data in the prior book,” said Kruger, a clinical associate professor in the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions, where she also is the director of teaching innovation and excellence.

“I would have to go out and find my own resources to teach this at an appropriate level.”

As they worked on the content, Kruger, Moralez and Siqueira reflected on their own teaching methods and challenges, as well as the content their students sometimes struggle with. This understanding helped them make key decisions about what to include in the new edition.

“My coauthors and I have taught many classes, and we all put together our experiences to determine what changes should be implemented,” Kruger said. “We added a chapter focused on climate change because we know it’s an area that's going to impact population health. We also updated the COVID-19 chapter. We now can look back and see some of the shortcomings of public health and hopefully teach the next generation what to do if there's another pandemic.”

To incorporate newer and emerging public health issues, the authors also made other notable additions to the content.

“Public health has gone through a lot of transition in terms of understanding social determinants of health — barriers to health,” Kruger said. “We wanted to make sure that information about social determinants of health was threaded throughout this text, so that students who are learning about this are not blaming the individual but thinking more structurally about barriers to health.”

Read more about social determinants of health in this article on the Jones and Bartlett Learning blog. In addition, a video interview with all three authors of the seventh edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health is posted with this blog article.

Chapter Crosswalks to CEPH Criteria Guide Faculty Planning

To better align the book with CEPH accreditation criteria, Kruger, Moralez and Siqueira mapped each chapter to specific criteria. For example, the team revamped the chapter on statistics to provide a more thorough exploration of data collection and analysis, reflecting D9 criteria. The crosswalk ensures that students are exposed to all facets of the foundational public health knowledge required by CEPH.

Thanks to these content correlations, faculty can confidently use the seventh edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health to teach CEPH-required content to undergraduate and graduate students.

“We have brought the text to current-day competency requirements,” said Kruger, who also is  a member of the education advisory committee for the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). The new edition specifically meets criteria for D1, D9, D10 and D12 requirements.

“When it comes to D9, the concept and application of basic data, the prior edition had a chapter on statistics, but it didn't fully go through the process,” she said. “After gathering data, what happens with that data in academic settings? How do we get the data to publication? As authors, I think we did a good job of really thinking about that and addressing issues like this.”

Flexibility for Varied Teaching Modalities and Class Schedules

To meet the needs of faculty in a range of education settings and with varying teaching styles, the authors restructured the text to provide fewer, more comprehensive chapters that create opportunity for teaching flexibility.

“We made some pretty radical changes by compressing the number of chapters,” Kruger said. “We wanted to make it flexible enough that whether you teach two times a week or three times a week, you could have students cover part of a chapter and then at the next class, another part of that chapter. While the chapters are longer, we feel that it provides more flexibility because schools vary in how they teach the content.”

Relevance Through Updated and Relatable Content

The revision process also involved a critical look at the text's content to ensure relevance to a new generation of students. The authors removed outdated material and introduced more recent topics, and they also tackled future-oriented issues like misinformation and the impact of artificial intelligence on public health. The authors believe these changes will help prepare students for the challenges that lie ahead.

“Some of today’s students were not born when 9/11 occurred, so we removed that content,” Kruger said. “We added more relatable, current topics, such as the Flint, Mich., water crisis, which had not been included previously.

“I think we also did a nice job thinking about the future of public health,” she continued. “The book now covers some of the challenges we're going to face, including contemporary issues like mis- and disinformation, and even AI in health.”

Given its detailed chapter crosswalks with CEPH criteria, its  more contemporary content, and a more flexible structure, the authors believe the seventh edition of Schneider's Introduction to Public Health will be an asset for educators and students alike.

“We tried to ensure that this would not be out of date as soon as it was in print because we knew public health does depend on who's in the administration,” Kruger said. “We highlighted where government plays a role in public health and how changes in policies between different administrations have impacted the health of the population.

“As an instructor of this class myself, I've been using the Schneider textbook for years,” she continued. “It was rewarding to think about different ways other faculty use this text and to accommodate it for different situations. Even the three of us writing the book taught the class very differently. I think having those diverse perspectives was really helpful.”

Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health

The authors of the seventh edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health bring this classic text into a new era of learning and teaching. In addition, the book now clearly aligns with CEPH criteria.

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