Public health is what we do together as a society to ensure the conditions in which everyone can be healthy. Although many sectors play key roles, governmental public health is an essential component. Recent stressors on public health are driving many local governments to pioneer a new Public Health 3.0 model in which leaders serve as Chief Health Strategists, partnering across multiple sectors...

Public health enjoyed a number of successes over the twentieth century. However, public health agencies have arguably been ill equipped to sustain these successes and address the complex threats we face today, including morbidity and mortality associated with persistent chronic diseases and emerging infectious diseases, in the context of flat funding and new and changing health care legislation...

Leaders in public organizations are adopting many private sector management practices to control costs and increase efficiency. Nowhere is this more evident than among state health agencies. State health agencies were encouraged to change the way they operate by the 1988 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on The Future of Public Health. This report portrayed public health as being in disarray. ...

CONTEXT The epidemiologic shift in the leading causes of mortality from infectious disease to chronic disease has created significant challenges for public health surveillance at the local level. OBJECTIVE We describe how the largest US city health departments identify and use data to inform their work and we identify the data and information that local public health leaders have specified as...

The crescendo of seemingly intractable threats to our global well-being has prompted a call for more leaders in public health. Indeed, many highly motivated and well-intentioned individuals seem poised to respond. But as aspiring public health leaders prepare for action, there is a marked dearth of proven and tested teachings, models and frameworks to guide them. With relatively little public h...

To meet the dynamic and evolving challenges of public health in the 21st century, our society should foster the next generation of public health leaders. We offer a vision for doing so, by introducing prevention literacy and education from the earliest possible starting point and then broadening these concepts throughout the educational ladder. Making this societal commitment now to nurture suc...

OBJECTIVES To assess the level of agreement amongst a panel of public health nutrition leaders regarding the key descriptors used to define the field of public health nutrition. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey requiring quantitative and qualitative responses representing the first round of a consensus development Delphi technique. SETTING International. SUBJECTS Expert panel of 24 public he...

Public health leaders and managers need new leadership and management skills as well as greater entrepreneurial acumen to respond effectively to broad demographic, socioeconomic, and political trends reshaping public health. This article asserts that the need for such training and skills was the impetus for the conceptualization, design, and launch of the Management Academy for Public Health--a...