Bruce Lubotsky Levin - Foundations of Behavioral Health

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Even in the twenty-first century, the public health community continues to face formidable challenges. There is a need for more integrative and collaborative approaches in public health initiatives, considering the complex relationships among the social determinants of health within natural and built environments, population health and health-care systems, and economic, education, and social and community contexts. The continuing changes in the landscape of public health challenge our ability to reconceptualize our approach to how health-care professionals can contribute to health promotion, health education, and disease prevention efforts in communities constantly facing the globalization of communicable and noncommunicable diseases and environmental threats due to man-made and natural disasters.

With an ever-increasing global focus on integrative approaches to solve public health problems, it is essential that behavioral health professionals are seen and utilized as integral members of interdisciplinary and interprofessional health-care teams. While clinically trained behavioral health professionals come from a variety of academic preparations in psychiatry, psychology, counseling, social work, and pastoral counseling, there is also a need for these same behavioral health professionals to develop strong foundations in population health and behavioral health. An example of this interprofessional education and training is found within the University of South Florida College of Public Health, where a cadre of professionals are being educated in behavioral health (i.e., the study of alcohol, drug abuse, and mental disorders from a population perspective) within masters and doctoral degree programs. This group of professionals is uniquely positioned to educate the public on disease prevention, health promotion, and development and financing of effective service systems specifically in the behavioral health arena.

This tome features the work of scholars from the academic and professional fields of public health, medicine, behavioral health, social work, economics, criminology, health communication, and pharmacy and illustrates the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to integrative population health and behavioral health-care delivery. In addition, it provides a global perspective of practice and policy in behavioral health. Each chapter concludes with a section entitled Implications for Behavioral Health. This section reminds the readers of the importance of the chapter topic for the larger fields of behavioral health and public health.

This text examines the critical relationships for understanding the importance of integrating population health and behavioral health services from a variety of lenses (national, regional, and global). Public health graduate students and professionals would greatly benefit from exploring the chapters in this volume considering the increase in complex comorbid disease clusters. In addition, behavioral health professionals would clearly better understand the nature of the important partnership between public health and behavioral health for improving and sustaining the health of populations at risk.

I am grateful to the coeditors and the authors for providing such an insightful, skills-focused, and practical learning tool and reference guide for the much-needed population- and systems-oriented behavioral health professionals of the future.

Foundations of Behavioral Health is being completed in the midst of congressional debate over attempts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) which was originally signed into law by Former President Barack Obama on 23 March 2010. However, debate over health-care reform is hardly new, with many attempts at health-care reform attempted during the previous (approximately) half century.