ABSTRACT
The Netherlands is a relatively small, but densely populated country with 15 million inhabitants. The resulting instability in the age structure of the population means that the Netherlands still has one of the lowest percentages of over 65's in the population but will move by 2030 to a position of having the oldest population. This very rapid ageing will have a major impact on health and health care needs in the future and its financial consequences are already an important issue in health policy. In the Dutch medical specialty of public health medicine prevention, policy and management are included. Although the health care system is mostly devoted to diagnosis and treatment of individual patients, some of the services have a direct responsibility for prevention. Many of them are confronted increasingly with financial constraints and thus have to make policy decisions about the allocation of funds to different types of services or to the selection of patients from waiting lists.
