Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management, Lloyd F. Novick and Glen P. Mays, editors. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, Inc., 2001. 806 pages, hardcover, $ 79.00.
In an impressive, comprehensive, up-to-date tome titled Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management, a pantheon of over fifty distinguished public health professionals (drawn substantially from the academic world but including also many public health practitioners) have constructed an exemplar of public health scholarship. The numerous contributors vivify public health administration by creating a roadmap for the potential resolution of emerging public health concerns and issues, focusing sharply on population-based management.
"Population-based management," as envisaged by this superbly organized and structured text, refers broadly to public health activities managed not within individual institutions, programs, and organizations, but between them. In remarkably engaging fashion, this lengthy textbook proffers a meticulous description of the strategies of population-based management, targeted to the improvement of public health. The cardinal organizing principle and unifying theme for the volume, in fact, is the concept of population-based management as an effectual, forward-looking mechanism for the achieving of gains in public health. Together with a salutary delineation of state-of-the-art, population-based management techniques, the further concomitant core purpose of the volume is to generally stimulate critical thinking about public health issues. With respect to accomplishing this bifurcated, didactic mission, it cannot be gainsaid that the volume succeeds admirably.
The text is structured as a tetrad of "parts," which ramify into thirty chapters. The rich profundity of information comprising the text will likely slake the intellectual thirst of readers solicitous of imbibing public health-related knowledge and insights. Generally, Part I of the volume adumbrates the contours of core theoretical and structural pillars upholding the foundation of public health administration, including legal and ethical bulwarks. Part II examines operational activities pertinent to population-based management and attendant administrative issues and processes. The respective chapters in this part are, in a sense, appendages of the body of effectual management of population-based, public health initiatives. The focus of Part III is on strategies for managing population health that cut across organizational boundaries. The concluding Part IV of the volume consists of chapters that study the application of public health managerial decision making in particular practice settings that are representative of contemporary public health practice.
Several instructional features add to the scholarly depth of the text including: an information-laden "glossary," succinctly defining technical terms relevant to public health; "chapter reviews," which pithily epitomize the substance of the text; a multitude of exhibits, figures, and tables, which suitably and significantly embellish the textual material; and multitudinous references. Overall, the textual material, coupled with the foregoing added features, result in a veritable compendium of public health administration-related data, exposition, and insight.
Prospective readers, nonetheless, should understand that this intellectually valuable textbook may be useful as a starting point for the possible solving of public health administration-related problems, but probably not as an endpoint. Although a thicket of thorny issues and topics are addressed by the text, the generalized textual discussion is not a proper substitute for the precise molding of a particular solution to a specific, real-life problem appertaining to public health administration. It is noteworthy that, even though public health is intertwined inseparably with the law, curiously only two of the contributors are lawyers.
The rather recondite nature of the text is not really tailored closely to fit lay readers. The book has didactic value, however, for students of public health. The text may also be quite illuminating for public health researchers. Additionally, this fine text may be a potentially helpful resource for practicing public health professionals, including administrators, policy makers, and health care providers.