Practising public health in primary care is easier said than done

EDITOR,—I have received recent publications on relations between public health and primary health.1 The benefits of collaboration have been recognised but patchily achieved despite a huge shifting of public health work into general practice, which has contributed to its redevelopment as primary health care.

Modern health care requires doctors to understand the disciplines that underpin public health, including epidemiology, statistics, behavioural sciences, and health economics. Allyson M Pollock and F Azeem Majeed are right that public health skills cannot be taught in a …