[Primary prevention and health promotion--health science fundamentals for health policy].

There is a broad health policy consensus about the necessity of augmenting and improving primary prevention. To be successful, the current initiatives need to be supported by concepts, categories and classifications, meeting the criteria of logical consistency, political consensus and suitability for administration. This survey paper presents suggestions regarding to the relationship between primary prevention and health promotion, for the definition of different levels and starting-points of primary prevention as well as to concepts of evaluation and quality assurance.