New public health and old rhetoric

Old Europe — New Public Health

Public health and colonialism: a new or old problem?

Epidemiology is not alone as a discipline in facing awesome challenges. It would also be wrong to ascribe to epidemiology any particular failures; many disciplines have shared diYcult times as the world around them is restructured. What is at stake for the entire spectrum of public health disciplines—from “hard” medicine to “soft” policy—is nothing more than a need to re-think their own role in...

Systematic reviews in public health: old chestnuts and new challenges.

a Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT, England. Correspondence to Mark Petticrew (e-mail: [email protected]). The Bulletin’s editorial team has decided to encourage systematic reviews. This is an important decision and is to be welcomed. However it is possible that it will not be received positively by all. Some may fe...

International public health: between old and new paradigms.

today's changing world, public health has had to adjust to new demands arising out of the intense activity of complex and dynamic cultural, social, and economic processes that transcend borders. The dizzying development of trade, modes of transport, and telecommunications, which has led to the nearly exponential growth of migration, has contributed to this phenomenon. Changes in the health stat...

Epidemiology, Public Health, and the Rhetoric of False Positives

BACKGROUND As an observational science, epidemiology is regarded by some researchers as inherently flawed and open to false results. In a recent paper, Boffetta et al. [Boffetta P, McLaughlin JK, LaVecchia C, Tarone RE, Lipworth L, Blot WJ. False-positive results in cancer epidemiology: a plea for epistemological modesty. J Natl Cancer Inst 100:988-995 (2008)] argued that "epidemiology is parti...