ABSTRACT
In the United States, states and local communities continue to have expanding responsibilities for meeting health needs without concomitant resources. The California Healthy Cities project selects cities based on their submission of proposals and one-year work plans for implementing Healthy Cities pilot projects. The Planned Approach to Community Health (PATCH) programme is designed to help communities plan, implement and evaluate health promotion and health education programmes by working with representatives from the community, state and local health departments, and the Centers for Disease Control. Consistent with American pluralism, there are a number of useful health promotion models in the United States that support communities as they address complex health problems at the local level. The National Consensus Conference on Efforts to Improve Public Health advanced the understanding of the various health promotion approaches and their contribution to achieving the national health objectives.
