Population Health Science

Population Health Science formalizes an emerging discipline at the crossroads of social and medical sciences, demography, and economicsan emerging approach to population studies that represents a seismic shift in how traditional health sciences measure and observe health events.Bringing together theories and methods from diverse fields, this text provides grounding in the factors that shape population health. The overall approach is one of consequentialist science: designing creative studies that identify causal factors in health with multidisciplinary rigor. Distilled into nine foundational principles, this book guides readers through population science studies that strategically incorporate: · macrosocial factors · multilevel, lifecourse, and systems theories· prevention science fundamentals· return on investment · equity and efficiency Harnessing the power of scientific inquiry and codifying the knowledge base for a burgeoning field, Population Health Science arms readers with tools to shift the curve of population health.

This book's great strength derives from a clear and cohesive narrative dealing with the complex, messy and dynamic way in which the social context of our lives interacts with our individual biological make-up and behaviours - in the here and now, and even preceding conception. [...] The authors seek to embolden the next generation of epidemiologists not to be deterred by political and practical constraints and to embrace ubiquitous factors - those macrosocial variables which might seem out of reach, almost impenetrable.

Katherine M. Keyes, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on life course epidemiology with particular attention to psychiatric disorders, including cross-generational cohort effects on substance use, mental health, and chronic disease. She has particular expertise in the development and application of novel epidemiological methods, and in the development of epidemiological theory to measure andelucidate the drivers of population health.Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, is the Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the School of Public Health at Boston University. A physician and epidemiologist interested in the social production of health of urban populations, his work explores innovative cells-to-society approaches to population health questions, with an overall aim of advancing a consequentialist approach to population health scholarship. He is a past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and an electedmember of the National Academy of Medicine.Together Keyes and Galea have taught introductory epidemiology across various institutions for more than 15 years.