In this opening chapter, we outline some of the most influential (and most contested) definitions of health, and approaches to health promotion. Although some success has been claimed for health promotion interventions, in general the results to date have been modest: for example, safer sex campaigns in preventing HIV infection among gay men. In other areas efforts have been remarkably disappointing, notably in preventing smoking uptake among adolescents. ‘Health promotion’ is a term which has been applied to a very wide range of activities performed in many and diverse contexts
