Evidence based health promotion

AIM: The purpose of the paper is to present assumptions underlying the evidence based approach in health promotion. As a starting point the development of the evidence based approach successively implemented since 1980's in medicine was taken. Its fast development effected with transitioning principles of the approach to other areas directly connected to health. Implementation into health promotion was correlated with necessity to redefine role and characteristics of evidence. Biomedical approach to evidence, presented in the evidence based medicine, due to marginalization of social and behavioural aspects does not include the complete specificity and full spectrum of tasks of health promotion. In addition strong concentration of this evidence group on the category of sickness causes its usefulness to be severely limited. Evidence-based health promotion emphasizes the role of a social factor through the incorporation of target society opinion as a fully legitimated evidence material. Additionally evidence-based approach incorporates new elements into health promotion, such as systematic reviews of a professional literature conducted with use of standardized methodology and standard tools of possessing and housing information produced in the conducted programmes.