Care Work in Europe: Current Understandings and Future Directions

including students and professionals from social care as well as health care and environmental health. What works particularly well is the structure of the book, which first provides underpinning knowledge and skills (exploring for example the tools of demography and epidemiology), before delving into practical applications and the challenges facing public health in practice, such as tackling cancer and obesity. The main strength of the book is its clear and accessible writing style, which is genuinely engaging. Even the most difficult concepts are well explained with helpful diagrams, self-tests and examples. The book comes with the bonus of an excellent interactive CD-Rom. This CD can be used to test the knowledge of the subject. This is well compiled with the main menu covering the ten chapters (Part 1) of the volume with three types of learning resources for each chapter. A combination of multi choice and short answer questions are employed with model answers supplied. Further reading suggestions, web links and calculators are included, with a resource pack summarizing the epidemiology of 12 common diseases completing the CD. Throughout there are many references to the importance of multi-agency and interprofessional working in achieving health promotion and public health outcomes. However, the book could have explored the mechanics of this further, especially as regards the implications for interprofessional education in seeking ‘‘to develop the skills and capacity of others so that they can then promote health as part of their work’’ (p. 88). In England the move toward world class commissioning (Department of Health, 2007a) and the requirement that upper tier local authorities and primary care trusts undertake ‘‘Joint Strategic Needs Assessment’’ (Department of Health, 2007b), means that this is a particularly timely and welcome publication. Indeed, had the section on health needs assessment made more explicit reference to the latest policy guidance then it could have exploited a gap in the market since it is acknowledged that learning resources for commissioning are in short supply. In relation to the broader remit of public agencies in contributing to public health, issues such as refuse collection and, in the light of recent flooding, sewerage system design and maintenance are perhaps not given sufficient attention. Overall, this is a rare example of a genuinely inspiring text book. I especially liked the nice touches throughout such as the friendly ‘‘good luck – enjoy learning’’ messages.