Economic evaluation of health promotion: friend or foe?

It is commonly believed that economic evaluation is hostile to health promotion and that the requirement for health programs to be cost effective will result in a biased allocation of funds in favour of programs that can demonstrate short-run benefits as defined by inadequate outcome measures. The paper is concerned with the validity of this perception. It is argued that economic evaluation has the potential for treating health promotion activities on an equal basis with other health interventions. The major obstacle to this does not arise from the theory of economic evaluation, which is discussed, but from a lack of information about outcomes. Without this information any evaluation--economic or otherwise--is flawed. Three problems relating to the economic evaluation of health promotion activities are considered. These are: the discounting of future health benefits; the potential for economic evaluation to be counter-productive if applied to 'immature' projects; and the practical problems encountered in the measurement of the outcomes of health promotion programs. A four-fold classification which is based upon a distinction between disease cure, individual health promotion, community welfare and systemic change designed to promote either individual health or social well-being. The capacity of economics to incorporate these objectives is discussed.