In recent years public and private investment in health promotion has burgeoned, prompted by the emergence of a new scientific paradigm for thinking about the causes of chronic disease. Since World War II official statistics in most of the developed countries have shown a decline in death rates from infectious diseases and the rise of the ‘modem killers’, strokes, heart disease, cancer and road trauma [I]. In response to the growing scientific evidence of the links between ‘lifestyle’-smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, diet-and the risk of dying from any one of these causes, came the concept of reducing risk factors by promoting healthy lifestyles. Recent experience of the Health Promotion Unit of the Northern Metropolitan Region of the Health Department of New South Wales, Australia, illustrates some of the opportunities for health promotion and some of the difficulties of assessment. According to the 1977-1978 Australian Health Survey [2J, 76% of Australians have a medical examination in a 12 month period and 61% of these are to a general practitioner. Yet few efforts in health promotion have attempted systematically to involve doctors in primary care. Some evidence from the United Kingdom suggests that the general practitioner can be an effective health promoter [3]. The Health Promotion Unit had considerable experience with other health promotion initiatives [4-61 and some previous experience of working with general practitioners in which they were asked to ‘prescribe’ exercise and advise on smoking cessation to patients aged 30-50 years. Perceiving the opportunity to involve general practitioners on a wide scale, the Health Promotion Unit, assisted by a Steering Committee with representatives from the two hospitals in the region, and research advisers from family practice training, community medicine and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, designed a package related to hypertension suitable for general practitioners.