No Lasting Stability

In as much as the main reason for the establishment of the 1986 Public Health Enquiry was the identification of problems concerned with the control of communicable disease, it was important to ensure that its recommendations were being implemented. By a curious set of coincidences, I found myself almost immediately deeply involved in many of the activities flowing from the Government’s acceptance of the recommendations. Having indicated my intention to take premature retirement from Coventry Health Authority in 1990 in order to develop my teaching activities at Warwick University, where I had been a visiting senior lecturer in community medicine for 10 years, I found that the fact that I was immediately available for part-time work led to a number of interesting invitations from a variety of organisations all of which were focused on one or other aspect of implementing the Acheson recommendations.