Epidemiology training and public health practice

There is a significant role for the practice of epidemiology throughout the world if health professionals are to work effectively towards ‘Health for All’. The status quo leaves a great deal to be desired, as evidenced by recent signals from the premier international health agency, the World Health Organization (WHO). The forty-first World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 1988 approved a resolution stressing ‘the importance of epidemiology as a tool for the formulation of rational health policy’ (PAHO, 1988). In addition to its key role ‘in studying the causes and means of prevention of disease’, the Assembly noted epidemiology's valuable inputs in ‘health systems research, information support, technology assessment, and the management and evaluation of health service’.