Books

Explore books from the Luby Lab that translate research, teaching, and practical experience into accessible insights. These works offer guidance for students, researchers, practitioners, and others working to improve health worldwide.

New Release

Theories of Change in Global Health
By Stephen Luby and Sabina Faiz Rashid · Oxford University Press, 2026

Global health interventions aim to improve health in communities. Each rests on a theory of change that addresses a constraint within the complex system shaping global health. Drawing on fifteen common theories, case studies, and examples across contexts, Luby and Rashid develop a framework for understanding when different approaches are likely to succeed—and when they are predisposed to fail.

Key Takeaways

The book provides critical guidance on choosing the most promising theories of change and encourages stakeholders to consider a broader range of possible interventions.
Fifteen theories of change, illustrated through real case studies, give researchers and funders a shared framework instead of borrowed intuition from a single discipline.
Written for the next generation of practitioners: the book grew directly out of Dr. Luby's Stanford course, PUBPOL 291.

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The Pathway to Publishing: A Guide to Quantitative Writing in the Health Sciences
Stephen Luby and Dorothy Southern · Springer, 2022

Writing a first-author manuscript is one of the hardest and most important skills a young scientist can build — and one of the least taught, especially for researchers writing in a second language. This open-access guide walks through the errors mentors see most often in draft manuscripts, and how to fix them, so strong research doesn't stall at the writing stage.

Key Takeaways

Careful manuscript review is scarce — experienced scientists rarely have time to give it, so early-career researchers are often left guessing.
Written with ESL writers specifically in mind, closing a gap most scientific-writing guides ignore.
Fully open access, so any student or mentor anywhere can use it at no cost.

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