[Using evidence to assess the effectiveness of health promotion programs: a few fundamental issues]

This paper first discusses more generally the notion of "evidence" and then applies it to the field of health promotion. It is argued that health promotion has not yet reached the status of a fully recognised and recognisable discipline, borrowing many of its theoretical and methodological approaches from apparatuses to a wide variety of established other disciplines. Consequently, developing "evidence-based" practices in health promotion, as in biomedicine for example, is problematic on many counts and leaves three major issues unsolved. These issues are addressed and the authors conclude on an optimistic note, despite the serious problems that still remain to be solved.