Smoking is one of the major causes of premature death and its negative effects on a person's health are a global issue. Therefore, the United Kingdom has introduced new policies aimed at reducing the proportion of smokers from 26% in 2005 down to 21% by 2010. One mechanism to meet this policy target is the provision of stop smoking services. This article aims to estimate the Leeds smoking population at the small area level and especially to highlight the distribution of hard-to-reach groups such as heavy smokers (> 20 cigarettes/day) and pregnant women who smoke. Then optimal location strategies are discussed in relation to stop smoking services. The findings show the importance of adding a spatial component to find out where the smoking population or specific subgroups of smokers are to support policymakers or healthcare planners who are responsible for the planning process of the services.

A global health transition is currently underway. The burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is increasing rapidly in the developing world, very much as a result of changes in lifestyles. In addition to changes in tobacco use and physical activity, major changes are taking place in diets, contributing greatly to the growing epidemic of NCD. Thus, a huge global public health challenge is how to influence the trends in diet and nutrition for effective global NCD prevention.

The health transition took place rapidly in Finland after World War II and mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD) was exceptionally high. The North Karelia Project was launched in 1972 as a community-based, and later as a national, programme to influence diet and other lifestyles that are crucial in the prevention of CVD. The intervention had a strong theory base and it employed comprehensive strategies. Broad community organisation and the strong participation of people were the key elements. Evaluation has shown how the diet (particularly fat consumption) has changed and how these changes have led to a major reduction in population serum cholesterol and blood pressure levels. It has also shown how ischaemic heart disease mortality in a working-age population has declined by 73% in North Karelia and by 65% in the whole country from 1971 to 1995.

Although Finland is an industrialised country, North Karelia was rural, of rather low socio-economic level and with many social problems in the 1970s and 1980s. The project was based on low-cost intervention activities, where people's participation and community organisations played a key role. Comprehensive interventions in the community were eventually supported by national activities – from expert guidelines and media activities to industry collaboration and policy. Similar principles for nutrition intervention programmes could be used in developing countries, obviously tailored to the local conditions. This paper discusses the experiences of the North Karelia Project in the light of needs from the less-industrialised countries and makes some general recommendations.

In order to analyse the allocation of public care services in the city of Solna, Sweden, and how they changed in response to a rapid growth of the number of elderly people, a comparison was made between two surveys, 1985 and 1991.

The surveys comprised all citizens of Solna who, on the day of the survey, were receiving long-term public medical and/or social care services. Living arrangements and services received were registered together with assessments of social support and disability/dependency. The latter was measured according to a special scale (the ASIM index) and – for 1991 – the Katz index of ADL. The assessments were made by the ordinary staff. The analysis showed that older and non-married persons were more likely to become clients of the public care system. Institutionalisation was also more common among the non-married – especially for men.

Connected to the rapid increase in the number of the very old in the context of limited resources was a sharp decline during the period 1985–1991 in the proportion of the Solna population that received public care services in some form. This decline concerned all age-groups of both sexes, married as well as non-married, but the married were more affected than the non-married – especially among the women. The reductions in the proportion of the population that received care in the home affected mostly married persons in the oldest age group. Reductions in institutionalisation had most impact on very old, non-married men – partly counteracted by increases in the provision of home help. Multivariate analysis showed functional disability – in 1991 dependency in ADL according to Katz - and living arrangements to be the most important variables in explaining the allocation of home help in domiciliary care and sheltered housing.