Effective Public Health Practice for the 21st Century: Expert Advice Based on Population Health Principles

We are delighted by the spirited, scholarly and well-argued commentaries; we concur with much of what the commentators have said and have incorporated some of their thoughts and ideas into our response. Along with the commentaries, our response incorporates some ideas generated by others and the evolution of our own thinking to reiterate and support the principles we articulated in the lead paper (Frank et al. 2022). We argue that public health expert advice should be informed by population health thinking and recognize the inherent uncertainty in any guidance. We conclude that effective public health practice for the 21st century should recognize the importance of the broader determinants of health and health inequity, acknowledge the inherent complexity in attributing health outcomes and be mindful of both the unintended consequences and the potential benefits of upstream action to address threats to global health.