Health promotion is an area that has been relatively neglected by health economists. 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 perceived difficulties in applying standard economic appraisal techniques to health promotion programmes. Health Promotion Wales was the first UK Health Promotion Agency to employ a health economist. In February 1998, at a meeting of the research departments of the four territorial agencies at the time (Health Promotion Wales, Health Education Authority, England, Health Promotion Authority for Northern Ireland and the Health Education Board for Scotland), it was decided that a position paper on health economics and health promotion would be useful. A meeting involving seven health economists from six universities and six health promotion researchers representing the then four UK agencies was held to inform this paper. Three broad areas were discussed illustrating the potential role for health economics in health promotion; these were economic evaluation, the role of economics in explaining and predicting individual behaviour, and economic policy and health promotion policy. This paper summarizes the main discussion points from the meeting.
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Janine Hale (2000) studied this question.