First published to broad acclaim in the early 1980s, today　Donaldsons' Essential Public Health is widely adopted as the standard text for public health students and practitioners across a range of disciplines. The text brings together, in one volume, the principles and applications of epidemiology, the main health problems experienced by populations and by the main groups within them, the strategies for intervention to promote health and prevent disease, the main themes underlying health policy formulation, and a description of the provision of health services.