Time for heroes: Public health leadership in the 21st century

摘要

Public health leaders have been criticised for their policy stances, relationships with governments, and failure to train the next generation.1 At the same time, there is widespread recognition that the challenges posed by obesity, alcohol, smoking, and climate change require solutions from public health approaches. As part of a project funded by the Worldwide Universities Network, we explored the role of leadership in tackling the public health challenges of the 21st century. Leaders in public health come from not only from within the profession but also, and perhaps more importantly, from outside. Public health has a proud history of claiming others for itself-the great Edwin Chadwick was a lawyer, after all.