In January 2019 the Police Foundation and KPMG held the fifth in a series of police policy dinners. The event brought together a group of leaders and experts in the fields of policing, public health, academia, and the third sector to discuss a ‘public health approach’ to crime prevention and the role the police could play. The event aimed to address the following questions:

• What do we mean by a public health approach to crime reduction?
• How widely can it be applied to ‘police business’ and what are its boundaries?
• What are the barriers to implementing public health approaches and how can these be overcome?

This report provides a summary of the issues raised during the discussion.