The aim of this paper is to reflect on the past decade of research and comm
unity action on alcohol and especially on some of the presentations given i
n the three previous international meetings on community action: in Ontario
1989, San Diego 1992, and Greve Florence 1995. The projects reported on ar
e diverse, reflecting the different cultures represented, but there are als
o common strands. Among these common strands is the growing consensus that
at the heart of successful evaluated community action projects is a process
of reciprocal and respectful communication: between different community se
ctors and also between the community and researchers. While there is increa
sed acknowledgment of the knowledge community sectors bring to planning and
implementing community action, there is also an increasing focus on the ro
le of the researcher in providing research-based knowledge to facilitate th
e development of effective community strategies to reduce alcohol-use-relat
ed harm. This is in contrast to a research role which emphasizes only outco
me evaluation. Another development apparent through the years covered in th
e international meeting is the use of more naturalistic approaches to evalu
ation in acknowledgment that experimental design may not be feasible or sci
entifically appropriate for the evaluation of community action projects.