The public health dimensions currently scoped, and their top-level classes are shown in Table 6 . The 'functions' class has been discussed in Section 3.2.2. While there was reasonable agreement among the public health experts consulted over the top levels of the classes of 'health issues' (although its name was debated), 'determinants of health', and 'settings', the remaining classes are in the early stages of development and have not yet been subject to detailed consideration. The 'methods' class, in particular, established to describe the methods of public health intervention, is at an early stage of development. While population groups are important, it was generally agreed that they are not a toplevel class in a public health classification. As the targets of public health interventions, instances of population groups can be described by other classes in the classification, such as the person-level demographic descriptors in the 'determinants of health' class (e.g. age, sex). There was also agreement that stakeholders and partners, although important in the work of public health, did not warrant their own top-level class. As with population groups, they may also be described by other classes in the classification. This distinction is illustrated in Figure 7 , which distinguishes between classes in the classification (circles) and items to be classified (heptagons). The latter include (but are not restricted to) public health activities and programs (centre), public health interventions, public policies, outcomes (indicators that are useful for public health purposes, and those that are nationally reported), population groups, partners and stakeholders in the public health effort. Figure 7 also shows whether suitable classifications exist for use by the top-level classes, or whether they need to be developed. Existing classifications (e.g. Australian standards, international classifications of diseases, functioning and disability, external causes of injury) are available to classify major parts of the 'health issues', 'settings' and 'resources' classes. The National Public Health Information Working Group has determined that further development of classifications for the 'functions', 'determinants of health' and 'methods' classes are a required priority for the second phase of the project.