This chapter discusses the historical context for the case studies, justifies the country selection and presents the methods of analysis. To manage the historical analysis, I define four time periods, each of which has different contextual elements with different implica- tions for the following case studies. The first time (t0) period covers the years between 1880 and 1918, when health care and public health emerged as two different policy sectors. The second time period (t1) focuses on the time frame between 1918, and 1945. In the in- terwar period, the main theme was the competition between health care and public health. A third time period (t2) are the years between 1945 and 1980, which entail the establish- ment of individual health care. Along with the increase of the welfare state services and economic development, facilities of individual health care expanded enormously. Time pe- riod four (t3) spans over the years 1980 to 2010, during which new policy challenges, such as new infections and non-communicable diseases returned to the agenda of health policy and created a demand for more integrated solutions of health care and public health. In the second part of this chapter, I justify why I focus on five countries, namely Australia, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and the United States. The main criteria for selecting these nations is that the countries differ regarding their condition of unified government and professionalization of professions. Then, I present briefly the operationalization and the sources – secondary literature, documents, and interviews – as well as the method of data analysis for the comparative case studies.