Welcome¶
Welcome to Introduction to Public Health — an interactive intelligent textbook covering the core concepts, competencies, and frameworks that define modern public health practice, as articulated by CEPH, the CDC, and the WHO.
About This Book¶
This book spans the five CEPH core domains (epidemiology, biostatistics, environmental health, health policy and management, and social and behavioral sciences) along with seven cross-cutting competency areas: systems thinking, data science, simulation and modeling, health equity, ethics, communication, and prevention science.
A distinctive feature of the book is its emphasis on systems thinking and computational simulation. Causal loop diagrams, stock-and-flow models, and agent-based simulations are introduced as everyday tools for analyzing complex public health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic runs throughout the chapters as a recurring master case study.
Who This Book Is For¶
- Undergraduate and graduate students entering public health programs
- Practitioners in adjacent fields (medicine, nursing, social work, policy) who want a working foundation in population-health thinking
- Educators looking for ready-to-use interactive simulations and visualizations
- Self-directed learners curious about how data, ethics, and systems intersect in real outbreaks and policy decisions
No prior background in statistics or epidemiology is assumed — technical terms are defined inline the first time they appear.
How to Use This Book¶
Use the navigation sidebar on the left to explore:
- Chapters — twenty chapters organized by competency domain, in dependency order so prerequisites are always covered first
- Learning Graph — an interactive map of how every concept depends on the concepts before it
- MicroSims — short interactive simulations, each focused on a single concept and embeddable as an iframe in any page
- Course Description — the seed document used to generate the learning graph and chapter structure
Getting Started¶
New to the book? Start with Chapter 1: Foundations and follow the chapter order — concepts are layered intentionally so each chapter builds on the one before it.