[Public health: from the past toward new frontiers]

The Authors analyse and discuss the contents of some recent international meetings devoted to Public Health, namely the 10th Congress of the WFPHA, the 12th British annual Forum of Public Health and the 12th Conference of the EUPHA. Their efforts to evaluate health services comes off enriched with new scenarios of integration and convergence. Objectives of global interest in the world cannot be faced by individual countries alone: on the contrary, the whole scientific community of public health operators must be involved. The cultural, social and economic development is the unavoidable condition to increase the health level of the populations. No health organization with the characteristics of excellence can exist without a comparable, balanced development regarding the society and its economy. With such considerations in mind, the European Commission in 1997 has began to develop the Health Monitoring Programme, with the aim to build a system for monitoring health in the UE. Within this Programme, the Study ECHI 1 (European Community Health Indicators 1) has been published, which includes 4 large groups of indicators (demographic and socioeconomic indicators, health indicators, determinants of health/disease indicators, health services indicators); such a study was performed with the cooperation of OCSE and WHO/Euro researchers. The following ECHI 2 research did not change the supporting philosophy of ECHI 1. We are trying to evaluate whether the intervention of health operators and health structures could influence - increasing or decreasing - the phenomena described and measured by the indicators, inviting the readers to start a debate with us.