[The Epidemiologic Observatory and the Epidemiology Service: the Campania Region experience].

As an effect of recent Laws, epidemiology will be more and more involved in the assessment of goals in Public Health and policy making, so that the debate about structure and placing of epidemiological function is more than ever actual. In this view, the route of epidemiology in Campania Region is explained, with a detailed description of the history and laws as well as of the structure and functions of both central and local units in charge of epidemiological function; weaknesses and strengths of the current system are fully examined and an hypothesis for an organizational model in the next future is formulated.