[Community health: where do we stand after forty years?]

At the end of the 1970s, the term "community health" was hugely popular in the field of health and welfare in many countries throughout the world. Mainly inspired by American and Latin American sources, the concept was based on a participatory and multidisciplinary approach to preventive and curative health services. What is the current state of community health? The objective of this study was to examine the socio-historical development of community health over the last 40 years. The paper begins by presenting a conceptual framework defining community health and public health as two distinct domains in the field of health and welfare. The study found that depending on the setting, the historical period and the ability of actors to promote their views, the space occupied by the two domains and the relationships between them tend to vary, as shown by a comparative analysis between France and Québec from the 1970s to the 2010s. Based on the results of this study, the expression ?doing community health' appears to refer to a precise set of?practices based on certain approaches and methods implemented by actors in specific areas of intervention. Depending on the time and place, the actions and practices of the?concerned actors will determine the extent to which they are incorporated into the institutional context of public interventions.