Public health faces many challenges today and this will intensify in the future across many different areas - cost, technology, lifestyles, expectations and so on. In this lecture, Dr Joe Ravetz proposes that we need new ways of thinking to deal with these challenges. The work undertaken by the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology, Manchester University, over the last ten years has involved developing new ways of thinking in relation to urban policy, environment and climate policy, technology and innovation policy, etc. It is these new ways of thinking which Dr Ravetz proposes could offer more to the public health debate, for example, if we broaden the debate we can see it’s not just about health it’s about well-being, if we look at well-being it’s about communities, how they are functioning, and it’s about the people in those communities. This lecture explores the first steps in this thinking process.