Health Education as a Demand Concept

During times of budgetary restraint, the opportunity costs of health care expenditure are highlighted. As a result, policies on the prevention of ill‐health, which may have always been desirable for their own sake, are increasingly being viewed as alternatives to expenditures on curative care. Within a fixed budget, such alternatives share a common objective to maximise the overall return, measured in terms of reduced morbidity and mortality, to the expenditure. Health education is advocated as a major instrument of prevention policy. Since the link between increased knowledge, changed attitudes and altered behaviour is unproved, this article considers only those health education programmes which aim at specific behavioural changes. These programmes alone yield a return which can be com‐pared with those from expenditures in curative care.