Strategic management of community health, which is usually called community health planning, has never taken root in the United States. Public health professionals advocate and practice community health planning, and examples of successful planning efforts abound. On the other hand, planning projects are difficult to initiate and execute, and they often leave no lasting impression on the health system. In an era of managed care involving profit-seeking competition, the relevance of community-oriented planning may seem to be very much in doubt. However, planning has seldom been more needed or more useful, or so I shall argue in this book.