Some of the substantive issues involved Merzel and D'Afflitti's review of the literature on community approaches to health promotion, in this issue, are discussed. Four categories of community-based projects based on implicit constructions of community employed by investigators are considered: community as setting, community as target, community as agent, and community as resource. This typology is used to illustrate the problems involved in summarizing results across the array of community-based projects. In addition, the importance of community capacity, the use of social ecology as a framework for community interventions, the use of a theory of community change and the role of public health values are discussed.