The Boston Public Health Commission promotes the health of the people of Boston by protecting and fostering the three core functions of public health: assessment, assurance and policy development. It carries out these functions through a wide variety of activities including health promotion and disease prevention initiatives (such as neighborhood outreach and community education); provision of critical health services for vulnerable, under-served and at-risk populations (such as health and wellness clinical and education services for school aged children, emergency shelter and transitional housing and support services for the homeless, and substance abuse treatment for those suffering from addiction); emergency preparedness and response (such as pre-hospital emergency medical care and transport , infectious disease surveillance and outbreak control, and environmental hazards prevention and response); monitoring and reporting on the health status of the city’s residents (such as city wide and disease specific health status reports); and development of public policy approaches that support positive health outcomes (such as tobacco control, banning the use of transfats in food establishments, regulating biological laboratories, and environmental health regulations).