To find out more efficient ways of implementing health promotion programs and to determine the factors affecting the results of various interventions, we reviewed 73 articles on the effectiveness of health promotion programs. These include the papers on the smoking, alcohol, dmg abuse, nutrition(obesity) and stress management etc. Specific interventions evaluated in this review are education based on the lecture or video shows, health-related event activities, modifications of policy or the environment, health risk appraisal etc. By using Kil-IASA Line of Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs, National Congress Library Database and MEDLINE, we identified 201 articles published from 1980 to Jun. 1999 and finally selected 73 papers which contain the implementation process, and result of each program. The factors used in the analysis of the programs are (1) characteristics of participants (2) interventions evaluated (3) research design (4) length of programs and evaluation point (5) outcome indices (6) effect of program evaluated by each author. The study results did not prove positive effect of education based on lectures or video shows etc. Rather, it was suggested that lecture-based education has negative effect on the result. Event activity such as contest or health festivals has positive effect, and policy change or environmental change is closely related to the event activity. Also, the result shows that the overall effect of programs for the students is less than that of the programs for the others. The programs conducted over 1 -year are more likely to have positive outcomes than shorter ones. And, the outcomes of the programs with controlled research design such as experimental or quasi-experimental study tend to be evaluated inferiorly to those with non-experimental design.