Hegemony or health promotion? Prospects for reviving England's lost discipline

Abstract

Since 1997, health promotion has been steadily disappearing from public health in England. This is not only true of the phrase, but also of the concepts and the discipline it represents. Given the undoubted increase in health-promoting policies and programmes during this period, we consider whether this situation could represent a welcome mainstreaming of health promotion. However, on the basis of a detailed historical and contemporary review of health promotion and public health theory and practice, we conclude that this is not in fact the case. Rather, health promotion in England should be seen as the subject of a hegemonic absorption by an increasingly individualistic public health discourse. The currently increasing focus on well-being could, however, represent an opportunity for health promotion in England to be revived and reinvented.