The role of public health services in America is generally considered to be the reduction of illness, suffering, and death. But there is no agreement about how far public health efforts should go in attempting to modify behaviors seen as lifestyle choices, or whether the field's mandate extends to intervening in broader social and economic conditions. The books thirteen essays attempt to understand what are, and what should be, the field's chief goals and activities.

Public health and economics: externalities, rivalries, excludability, and politics / Sherry Glied The limits of relying on employers in an intersectoral public health partnership / Dennis P. Scanlon and Marianne H. Hillemeier Speaking for the public: the ambivalent quest of twentieth-century public health / Nancy Tomes Environmental health as a core public health component / Phil Brown Paternalism and its discontents: motorcycle helmet laws, libertarian values, and public health / Marian Moser Jones and Ronald Bayer Prevention strategies and public health: individual and structural prevention in homelessness / William McAllister, Mary Clare Lennon, and Is¿il C¿elimli Dealing with Humpty Dumpty: research, practice, and the ethics of public health surveillance / Amy L. Fairchild Health production: a common framework to unify public health and medicine / Alvin R. Tarlov The challenge of 9/11 to the ideologies of population and public health / David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz Public health preparedness: evolution or revolution? / Nicole Lurie, Jeffrey Wasserman, and Christopher D. Nelson Blown away: health care, health coverage, and public health after 9/11 and Katrina / Beatrix Hoffman