© 2003 American Public Health Association
The author is with the Center for Applied Public Health, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Cheryl Merzel, DrPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, New York, NY 10032 (e-mail: cm449@columbia.edu).
I appreciate Kullers comments, which give me an opportunity to further elucidate several points that are key to understanding contemporary community-based health promotion. The programs reviewed in our article are based on a model of populationwide primary prevention, implemented through a variety of psychosocial strategies targeting multiple health behaviors and conducted on several levels.1,2 In contrast, the interventions cited by Kuller employed clinical therapies for the purpose of prophylaxis or to treat identified cases. They were not designed to address the goal of population-level behavior change across all levels of risk. Thus, establishing the effectiveness of community-based health promotion programs
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