What contribution can health economics make to health promotion?

Health promotion is an area that has been relatively neglected by health ec onomists. There are a variety of reasons for this, including lack of demand by health promotion specialists, misunderstanding of what health economics has to offer the discipline of health promotion, misunderstanding of what health promotion is trying to do on the part of health economists, and perc eived difficulties in applying standard economic appraisal techniques to he alth promotion programmes. Health Promotion Wales was the first UK Health P romotion Agency to employ a health economist. In February 1998, at a meetin g of the research departments of the four territorial agencies at the time (Health Promotion Wales, Health Education Authority, England, Health Promot ion Authority for Northern Ireland and the Health Education Board for Scotl and), it was decided that a position paper on health economics and health p romotion would be useful. A meeting involving seven health economists from six universities and six health promotion researchers representing the then four UK agencies war held to inform this paper. Three broad areas were dis cussed illustrating the potential role for health economics in health promo tion; these were economic evaluation, the role of economics in explaining a nd predicting individual behaviour, and economic policy and health promotio n policy. This paper summarizes the main discussion points from the meeting .