New directions for health: towards a knowledge base for public health action

The need for new types of solutions to respond to community health needs, along with the poor fit between research and the knowledge needed for improving the health of populations, have stimulated a renewal process in the field of public health. Growing out of this movement, an international workshop held at the Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds in 1993 took up issues related to the role and limitations of epidemiology as generally practiced today. Concern for creating a relevant and sound knowledge base for public health action was the impetus guiding this project. Some of the major topics taken up in the deliberations of the workshop are reflected in the selection of papers that follow. They are highlighted and supplemented with an overview of other issues taken up by the conferees in this introduction.