Epidemiology in public health practice

• Several models exist for planning public health policies and programmes. Three important ones are: the Precede-Proceed model, the Five-Stage Community Organisation model and the Intervention Mapping model. • These models provide a detailed insight into the processes that take place during the four stages of the public health cycle. • Analysis of these models results in the following seven epidemiological steps that contribute to the public health cycle: conduct a needs assessment, support priority setting, formulate aims and objectives, construct a logic model, develop an evaluation plan, perform quality control and analyse processes and outcomes.