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Abstract
The emergence of health promotion in the 1980s was a direct response to critiques of health education which centred on its victim-blaming orientation and a growing appreciation of the need to address the wider determinants of health and health-related behaviour. This paper argues a priori that such critiques centre on a preventive model of health education and overlook its broader potential. It reviews a number of alternative models of health education and locates these within the core values of equity and empowerment which underpin the Ottawa Charter and subsequent WHO documents. It suggests that, despite the rhetoric of health promotion, practice frequently remained focused on individual behaviour change and the use of persuasive health education. The move to health promotion effectively stifled further debate about the broader role of health education in achieving individual empowerment and social change. This paper calls for a broader conceptualisation of health education–the New Health Education–and concludes that this should be the driving force behind health promotion.