[Potentials of and approaches to prevention. Current developments in Germany].

Prevention and health promotion are rewarding investments to stabilize our health security systems. They yield sustainable social and individual profit. This is precisely one of the explicitly declared aims of the government's coalition agreement of October 2002 - to upgrade and extend prevention and health promotion in Germany. The Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security is initiating measures and strategies to improve the framework for effective prevention and health promotion, for instance by initiating measures in the field of legislation and by establishing the German Platform for Prevention und Health Promotion.