This thesis investigates whether the Health Promoting Hospital (HPH) is the way forward in the promotion of health. To address this, a number of key areas are considered. Firstly, the thesis places the HPH into historical context, as it is from a long the tradition of efforts to promote health and prevent disease that the HPH emerges. In order to understand the complex field of health promotion, the thesis examines the legacy of health promotion and its impact on contemporary health promotion and therefore on the potential of the HPH. The answers to this provide the immediate context from within which the HPH would be implemented. There is a need not only to understand the HPH as a theoretical concept but also to understand how it has been translated into practice. Thus how the HPH has been adopted as a basis for modelling practice is examined. If the HPH is to be a way forward for health promotion, then it will need to be adopted widely by hospitals that have had little previous interest in, or experience of, promoting health. To investigate the prospect of such widespread adoption, a study was carried out of the attitudes, perceptions and practices of nurses and patients at a typical UK teaching hospital outside the HPH movement. The findings of this study, which drew on Communication of Innovation Theory as a conceptual framework, are reported. For effective health promotion, there is also need to address the legacy of weaknesses that have hitherto hampered progress. Thus the thesis examines the extent to which the HPH can address the contemporary weaknesses of health promotion and, broadening out from this, it suggests other initiatives that might be taken to advance the effective promotion of health and the effectiveness of the HPH. The thesis argues that the Health Promoting Hospital is a useful vehicle to support the development of health promotion in the hospital setting but that effectiveness is hampered by the fundamental weaknesses of health promotion that it is insufficient, on its own, to counter. Initiatives are suggested that can begin to redress this.