Concluding Remarks

Abstract

The papers offered in the third session of "Inside Urban Health" struck as a recurrent theme the need for medicine and public health to cooperate with other sectors. In a sense, all papers offered in all sessions of the symposium did so, for the factors affecting health in the nation's major cities are protean and require the efforts of a concerned citizenry acting in concert through society's institutions. The theme recalls the arguments made a quarter of a century ago, in the early days of the Institute of Medicine (IOM). In those days there was a debate within the IOM as to whether the Institute would take a narrow view, concentrat-ing on clinical medicine and biomedical research, or whether it would take a broader view, one that would involve connections with education and social services, with the cooperation of aca-demia, industry, and government.