This wide-ranging study reviews the state of public health worldwide and presents informed recommendations for real-world solutions. Identifying the most urgent challenges in the field, from better understanding the causes of acute diseases and chronic conditions to reducing health inequities, it reports on cost-effective, science-based, ethically sound interventions. Chapters demonstrate bedrock skills essential to developing best practices, including flexible thinking for entrenched problems, conducting health impact assessments, and working with decision-makers. From these current findings come long-term practice and policy goals for preventing disease, promoting health, and improving quality of life, both locally and globally. A sampling of the topics covered: · Health trends of communicable diseases. · Epidemiology of cancer and principles of prevention. · Respiratory diseases and health disorders related to indoor and outdoor air pollution. · Public health gerontology and active aging. · Migrant and ethnic minority health. · Public health genomics. A Systematic Review of Key Issues in Public Health offers graduate students in the discipline a firm grasp on the field as it presently stands, and a clear set of directions for its potential future.