This paper brings together ideas from two perspectives on ethics and health promotion. A discussion of the ethical dimension of the health promotion practice of community nurses is set in the wider context of health policy, with particular reference to health gain and individual responsibility. It is widely held that nurses have a key role to play in health promotion and that this is particularly the case for nurses working in primary health care. This assumption is reinforced by policy documents (...) from the World Health Organization, the Department of Health and statutory bodies such as the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting. The approach of many nurses to health promotion has tended on the one hand to be somewhat naive and on the other to be authoritarian and didactic; there has been little discussion in the nursing literature of the ethical aspects of health promotion. However, recent developments in nurse education, such as Project 2000 and the consequent changes to preregistration programmes, have resulted in increased attention to both ethics and health promotion within the curriculum. (shrink)