EDITOR, - Jan P Vandenbroucke seems to have an incomplete view of public health in Europe.1 Over 9000 members of the European Public Health Association and many more people in Europe and elsewhere work in public health. They work in vaccination programmes, environmental health, breast screening programmes, occupational medicine, accident prevention and safety, child health clinics, health clinics, health education programmes for dental hygiene, or AIDS prevention — to name but a few areas in which public health in the more narrow sense is traditionally active. In many countries the organisation and management of health services and health policy are also considered to be part of public health practice. The efforts of these public health professionals and their colleagues in clinical medicine have contributed to the increase in life expectancy and health status of our populations.

These practitioners in public health are supported by an impressive array of scientific research. The main disciplines are public health epidemiology and …