This issue brief, the first in a series designed to give a quick overview of new trends in public health, highlights the shift in public health departments’ focus--away from primary care toward community-oriented, population-based activities emphasizing health promotion. Examines various...

Reviews strategies that local health departments have developed and implemented to promote regular screening and early treatment, services that have been historically underused.

Notes the development of new partnerships between health departments and the community, including volunteers, schools, local interest groups, and managed care organizations.

Looks at staffing and budget concerns that have arisen in the changing health care environment, noting that all the health departments studied are reporting financial difficulties. Furthermore, staff recruitment, retention, and development have grown more challenging, although creative...

Examines the extent to which the NHSC has helped underserved communities prepare, recruit, and retain community-responsive, culturally competent primary care clinicians. Notes that clinicians have developed many community-oriented primary care programs for a wide variety of population groups; in...

More health plan consolidation, higher health care costs, and persistent hospital difficulties signal increasing concern about the future of the Syracuse health market, according to a new report from the Community Tracking Study.

Rapidly rising health insurance premiums and a worsening medical malpractice insurance climate threaten to decrease health insurance coverage and access to health care in Miami.

Despite the perception that few people are served by public psychiatric hospitals, they play a critical role in the continuum of care for people with mental illness. Although the capacity of these hospitals has diminished as a result of deinstitutionalization, they continue to serve people with...