title: [The international debate on the effectiveness of health promotion: where does it come from? Why is it so important?].
abstract: This paper aims at positioning the issue of health promotion effectiveness in the context of the international debate around the utilisation of evidence-based practices. In a sociological and historical perspective, it analyses how the evidence-based practices approach has confronted the field of health promotion, especially since the second half of the 1990's. It argues that this has occurred in the context of the evaluative concerns put forward by governments all over the world, in order to downsize their publicly funded health systems. After providing definitions and some historical context, five methodological and political issues raised by the idea of utilizing evidence-based practices in health promotion are presented. The paper concludes that this approach is far from a panacea but has potential limited utilization for certain kinds of health promotion practices. Alternative suggestions on how to establish "best practices" in this field are also offered.
authors.affiliation: Faculté des Sciences infirmières, Université Laval, Québec, Qc, Canada. Michel.ONeill@fsi.ulaval.ca
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: O'Neill
mesh_terms: D019985:Benchmarking; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000379:methods; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D011057:Politics