“This is the best textbook on health policy.”
Prof Uta Lehmann, Director, School of Public Health, University of Western Cape, South Africa

“The third edition of this excellent text reinforces its position as the best text that applies public policy concepts and theories to health policy.”
Prof Martin Powell, Professor of Health and Social Policy, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK

“This book is essential reading for anyone wanting guidance on managing the politics of the health policy process.”
Prof Jeremy Shiffman, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Health Policy, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Described as the best book in its field, this extensively updated third edition of Making Health Policy provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of health policy, its political nature and its processes at country and global levels. Written by a large and diverse group of leading experts, this clear and accessible book addresses the “how” of health policy making in a range of settings.

This fully revised edition:
• Responds to the movement to ‘decolonise’ and broaden the practice of global health and its related scholarship
• Provides new examples of health policy processes that bring additional theoretical perspectives and empirical studies from researchers outside North America and Europe
• Responds to developments in health policy such as the ecological crisis, the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of social media as well as having greater treatment of policy related to the social and commercial determinants of health
• Includes new chapters on the role of the values that underpin health policy debates and on how local policy is shaped by national, regional and global influences and organisations.

Making Health Policy is the ideal resource for students of public health and health policy, public health practitioners and policy makers.

Authors: Kent Buse, Nicholas Mays, Manuela Colombini, Alec Fraser, Mishal Khan and Helen Walls.

Understanding Public Health is an innovative series published by Open University Press in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where it is used as a key learning resource for postgraduate programmes. It provides self-directed learning covering the major issues in public health affecting low-, middle- and high-income countries. 

Series Editors: Rosalind Plowman and Nicki Thorogood.