AbstractThe paper first considerstacticalallocation problems in the health service (particularly the hospital) field which have been tackled by the mathematical programming approach. Examples of such problem areas are those of hospital admissions scheduling, nurse staff assignment, menu planning and the location of hospitals. However, examples of the successful implementation of such models in the literature have only been found for the area of menu planning.A number of proposed mathematical programming models are discussed for strategic problems which relate to planning the prevention and control of disease or population growth. The paper then outlines and comments on a number of potentially very valuable studies concerned with determining the mix and volume of different types of patients or cases to be given various forms of treatment or care.