[Community nursing from the viewpoint of public health]

Findings of health science as to the incidence and dynamics of health problems and the knowledge to optimize health promotion, prevention and patient treatment as well as international comparisons indicate that the potentials of nursing--understood as a system of nurses, nursing institutions and nursing science differentiated in itself--are not exhausted to their full extent within the German system of social health assurance. Following the introductory reflections on the relation between public health and nursing, being relatively young multi-disciplines of health science in Germany, this paper tries to identify and to describe the related deficiencies and approaches for their rectification by means of the four phases of the Public Health Action Cycle--assessment: of problems and fixing of priorities; policy formulation: selection, negotiation and fixing of strategies; assurance: organisation, implementation and control as well as evaluation: evaluation of the strategy and its results. This paper is the revised version of the basic lecture that the author gave on the occasion of the Fourth International Symposium of Nursing Science in Osnabrück in November 1996.