The Calman reforms have forced us to reconsider what paediatric trainees need to know and do in preparation for their consultant careers. With two or, at most, three years in which to master a speciality, the aims of training and the job content must be clearly defined. This is particularly true of community paediatrics, because it incorporates many different areas of practice, and clinical learning opportunities are not concentrated on one site as they are in hospital medicine or on one list as in primary care.

No two community paediatricians have exactly the same job description.1 Virtually all assume an element of clinical service to individual children, but most also include some “public health” activities designed to improve the care of specified groups of children or to measure and change the health status of the whole child population. Lennart Kohler defines the tasks of child public health as “placing the health of children and their families in their full social, economic, and political context” and believes this is “the responsibility of decision makers in all organisations in all sectors of the economy”.2

A series of articles to be published in theArchives over the coming months will review many aspects of child public health. The authors have been asked to consider what can be achieved by adopting a public health perspective, how improvements in health can be gained and measured, what role paediatricians might have in this process, and how they should be trained. This topic is timely in view of the government's support for public health and health promotion.