Book excerpt: Promoting Health: A Practical Guide continues to offer health promotion workers with an essential guide to day-to-day planning and service delivery in a variety of different areas of practice. - Describes the international and national strategies and movements that have emerged to reduce inequalities in health - Examines the concept of need and provides tools to assist in the identification of health promotion needs - Contains almost 50 exercises and 20 Case Studies to engage readers and reinforce learning - Describes the knowledge and skills required to draw on evidence, undertake research and use various techniques to inform and prioritise health promotion practice - Shows how to ensure that health promotion work contributes to local and national strategies - Looks at the concept of 'value for money' via learning ways of thinking based in health economics - Shows how to develop key skills that include information management, report writing, time management, project management, and change management - Looks at the effectiveness of good communication skills and emphasises the importance of establishing high-quality professional relationships - Provides practical guidance on the preparation of communication tools which range from leaflets, posters and display boards to the use of radio and television - Describes changes to the structure and organisation of public health within the UK, including the latest national standards for work in health promotion and public health - Outlines new research on the comparative effectiveness of different approaches to health promotion and public health practice - Explores the development of public health communication strategies, including social marketing, social media campaigns, and use of pressure groups and 'nudging' - Highlights the latest 'current thinking' across a variety of different settings, to ensure relevance to a broad array of practitioners working across differing settings - Explores the increasing use of the internet to help individuals monitor and support their own wellbeing