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The health of urban populations depends on multiple factors, among them access to health and social services. The Montreal Public Health Department (PHD) is part of such services, where a number of nurses are working within a multidisciplinary team. It is through the description of the work accomplished by the team for infectious diseases control and prevention, and the vignettes of real life events related to the follow-up of syphilis, tuberculosis and hepatitis A cases, as well as quarantined individual exposed to SARS that the authors want to illustrate the work of the urban public health nurses. The examples are preceded by a description of the socio-demographic characteristics of the city of Montreal, that influence health problems, and therefore nurses’ work.