scope:

Essential for anyone involved in the development of public health systems today and into the future, this book describes the characteristics of local, state, and federal public health agencies. Extremely well-referenced, this book can serve as a source book for beginning further education or to help with research topics in public health. In the second edition, five new chapters are added to provide state-of-the-art coverage of today's public health issues. The new chapters include an examination of public health in the 1990s, performance standards, the public health workforce, the effectiveness of health promotion and disease prevention, and international health.