Health protection requires legislation

doi:10.1136/bmj.39204.997616.BE

BMJ 2007;334:967 (12 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.39204.997616.BE

Letters

Reduced salt intake

Health protection requires legislation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Glasziou (previous letter) pleads for a description of whatclinicians and patients need to do. It is not simply about addingsalt at the dinner table but about understanding the considerablerole that players such as the food industry play in public health.¹Health protection through national fiscal and legislative policiesshould have a higher priority than health promotion interventionsapplied to general, primary care, and workforce populations.

The high risk strategy, the traditional medical approach toprevention, identifies individuals at high risk of subsequentcardiovascular disease events who are then offered behaviouralor pharmacological interventions. In contrast, the populationstrategy seeks to control the determinants of incidence in thepopulation as a whole.²

Public health policies need to take into account the role thatagriculture, trade, education, the physical environment, townplanning, and transport have on cardiovascular disease aetiology.Political action is needed to change urban planning, education,and . . . [Full text of this article]

M Justin S Zaman, clinical research fellow in epidemiology

University College London, London WC1E 6BT

j.zaman@ucl.ac.uk