Abstract

This paper focuses on public health education in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is considered a central control element for the prevention of diseases and historically builds on the social hygiene of the nineteenth century. The article takes up the change to modern public health and asks about the societal, political and social framework conditions for it. The causes for the outlined paradigm shift in public health education lie in three very different developments from the fields of science, society and economy. These include the risk factor model developed in US epidemiology, the professionalization of health education in Germany, and the women’s health movement. The article presents these developments and analyzes them on the basis of a specific health education campaign