In approaching a variety of current health problems, public health workers have tended to focus on individual behavior and lose sight of the larger social parameters that determine such behavior. Specific social policies for health are proposed with regard to cigarette smoking, alcohol, and coronary heart disease. There is 1 area in which social policy for health has recently undergone a decisive change. Medicare marks the 1st step toward abolition of the charity system of medicine. It is essential that social policy for health be based squarely on the principle of the primacy of prevention. First priority must be given to epidemiology, the prevention of disease occurrence, early case finding, and preventive supervision. Health policy merges with general social policy. Poverty, racial discrimination and war are major causes of death and disability. The health problems of poor nations which retain backward agricultural economies cannot be solved by simple programs of birth control; the key remains industrialization and economic development.