Copyright © 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. Context: National efforts are underway to classify a minimum set of public health services that all jurisdictions throughout the United States should provide regardless of location. Such a set of basic programs would be supported by crosscutting services, known as the "foundational capabilities" (FCs). These FCs are assessment services, preparedness and disaster response, policy development, communications, community partnership, and organizational support activities. Objective: To ascertain familiarity with the term and concept of FCs and gather related perspectives from state and local public health practitioners. Design: In fall 2013, we interviewed 50 leaders from state and local health departments. We asked about familiarity with the term "foundational capabilities," as well as the broader concept of FCs. We attempted to triangulate the utility of the FC concept by asking respondents about priority programs and services, about perceived unique contributions made by public health, and about prevalence and funding for the FCs. Setting: Telephonebased interviews. Participants: Fifty leaders of state and local health departments. Main Outcome Measures: Practitioner familiarity with and perspectives on the FCs, information about current funding streams for public health, and the likelihood of creating nationwide FCs that would be recognized and accepted by all jurisdictions. Results: Slightly more than half of the leaders interviewed said that they were familiar with the concept of FCs. In most cases, health departments had all of the capabilities to some degree, although operationalization varied. Few indicated that current funding levels were sufficient to support implementing a minimum level of FCs nationally. Conclusions: Respondents were not able to articulate the current or optimal levels of services for the various capabilities, nor the costs associated with them. Further research is needed to understand the role of FCs as part of the foundational public health services.

The North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP) brings together complete-count census data from late-nineteenth-century Canada, Great Britain, Iceland, Norway, and the United States into a single harmonized database. When released in 2005, the final version of the database will include the records of nearly 90 million people. The project will consistently code all variables across the different countries, while still retaining important national variation in census questions and responses. The authors provide a brief history of the project, discuss the main issues involved in creating a harmonized international census database, and outline the methodological and research opportunities the completed database will provide for scholars.

Describes the process involved in creating the occupational codes for the 1850, 1880, and 1920 Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS). PUMS are random samples of households taken from the US decennial censuses and coded into computer format for use by historians and social scientists. Much of the work for the 1850, 1880, and 1920 PUMS has been done by the Social History Research Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. The process for encoding occupational data was especially difficult because each census recorded such information differently. The laboratory solved this problem by using a common classification scheme and creating a data dictionary to translate the manuscript census information into codes. Additionally, they used occupational groupings of the 1950 census to create a supplementary coding scheme that provided more detailed information. In many instances the PUMS clearly demonstrate that the Census Office's shoddy procedures often led to dramatic undercounts of many occupational categories, particularly female domestic servants.