Pandemics, substance abuse, natural disasters, obesity, and warfare: these are not only health crises but social crises as well. Now a panel of leaders in global health explores the vital but understudied social theories behind the practice of health promotion, including cultural capital, risk and causality, systems theory, and the dynamic between individual and community.

David V. McQueen is the Associate Director for Global Health Promotion at the CDC, and the Program Leader for the IUHPE-WHO Global Programme on Health Promotion Effectiveness. He is on the editorial board of the Birkhauser journalSocial and Preventive Medicine, and he has co-edited the bookGlobal Behavioural Risk Surveillance for Springer. He is also co-editingGlobal Perspectives on Health Promotion Effectiveness (to be published in June 2007). His current research interests include: the theoretical foundations of health promotion, nature of evidence and evaluation in health promotion, analytical methods for risk factor surveillance data, new applications of surveillance, and the health implications of urbanization and urban sprawl.

Ilona Kickbusch is a private health consultant, and formerly Head of the Division of Global Health at Yale University School of Medicine, in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. She joined Yale after a long career with the World Health Organization where she initiated the OTTAWA Charter for Health Promotion and headed a range of innovative programs. She has published widely on the new public health and is the founder and chair of the editorial board of the journalHealth Promotion International. She continues to act as an adviser to the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization and a range of foundations, NGOs and the private sector on matters of global health and the development of health promotion. Presently she acts as the senior health advisor to the United Nations Association of the USAs global health campaign. She has also been designated the distinguished Fulbright New Century Scholars Leader on "Challenges of Health in a Borderless World." She received her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

From a Theory Group to a Theory Book.- Modernity, Public Health, and Health Promotion.- Critical Issues in Theory for Health Promotion.- Cultural Capital in Health Promotion.- Understanding Differentiation of Health in Late Modernity by Use of Sociological Systems Theory.- Managing Uncertainty Through Participation.- Thinking Health Promotion Sociologically.- Health Governance: The Health Society.