ABSTRACT
It is a cliché of socio-medical history to point out that the massive improvement in the health of populations of urban industrial societies during the past hundred years or so is far more a consequence of collective intervention in the environment than it is of the development, and even provision, of curative health care. However, in 1984 the editors of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found it necessary to remind readers and contributors that community health meant something more than the study of the health states of individuals in a community and expressed considerable concern about the decline in work by doctors on issues of the health of the community as a whole. Blume (1982) has made a similar point about the subordination of epidemiology to the concerns and practices of case-centred curative medicine. In the light of these concerns, it is appropriate to ask what does make a difference to the health states of populations; and in the context of this book, what might be the influence of housing and health policies?
