Keynote speech: health education and promotion programmes--the accountability aspect

In the early days of health education, people depended on health education specialists to provide information about diseases and their prevention. The differentiation between health promotion and health education, and the emphasis on the settings approach have resulted in the inclusion of a wide range of people and professions into these activities. This has raised the question of the protection of consumers, and the issue of accountability has become a major focus. This paper briefly traces the history of health education and promotion, with particular emphasis on the way people have dealt with accountability in the past as a platform for the future. The Polish model of hepatitis B vaccination is used to illustrate these developments.