People are responsible for themselves, but intervention programmes and decision-makers should ensure that people can make informed choices and that following healthy lifestyles is an acceptable option. Government departments other than the ministry of health need to be involved in a highly coordinated manner. Non-governmental organizations should also be involved and, ultimately, mobilization of the whole community is needed.

Carefully designed community programmes should form a link between the basic health research and the large-scale public health programmes and governmental policies. Such community programmes thus form a "model" for testing the approach for nationwide use. From an epidemiological point of view, the strength of the community approach (population approach) is that it is more effective in reducing disease rates in the community than restricted, but more intensive, interventions among high-risk individuals alone.