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Introduction to public health and public health economics

Chapter 1 opens with a historical perspective on the development of public health economics, presents a rationale for this book, and introduces the reader to what is known as public health or population health. This chapter introduces readers to the physical, environmental, and socioeconomic determinants of health and covers concepts such as social norms, ‘nudge’, ‘choice architecture’, and ‘assets-based approaches’ to public health. Strategies for prevention in public health developed by Geoffrey Rose are presented (Rose, 1985). Readers are then introduced to the three main questions in economics: what goods and services to produce, how to produce them, and how to distribute them. Readers are introduced to the economic costs of health harming behaviours such as alcohol misuse, the importance of the upstream approach across the life course and an introduction to the NICE reference case and the importance of study design in underpinning economic evaluation in public health.