Preface A Need to Strengthen the Knowledge Base Since the adoption of the Ottawa Charter in 1986, many countries have adopted and implemented a health promotion strategy understood as a set of coordinated intersectoral actions that aims to orient and support social change in order to improve health for all and reduce health inequalities. This expansion of health promotion practices and policies is linked to the evolution of our understanding of the conditions that infuence the health of populations and individuals and generate, reduce or mitigate health inequalities. The knowledge base for this strategy relies on the broad determinants of health and on programmes and policies—their planning, implementation and impact—aimed at changing the distribution of these determinants. While research teams, some of them high level, are producing relevant and valid data to enhance this knowledge base, evidence production remains insuffcient and scattered. Thus, the challenge is not just whether research is carried out. It is also essential to adopt a comprehensive approach that will enable the development of a structured feld of research that is likely to meet the need for scientifc knowledge to inform health promotion. That’s why the ambition of this handbook is not only to describe but also to contribute to organizing health promotion research as a specifc and clearly identifed feld of research and to strengthen the global research community. A Collective Endeavour The project was spearheaded by the UNESCO chair and WHO Collaborating Centre “Global Health and Education” and the Canada Research Chair in Community Approaches and Health Inequalities in partnership with the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE). The UNESCO chair and WHO Collaborating Centre “Global Health and Education” was launched in 2018. Among the objectives shared with the United Nations agencies, the contribution to the strengthening of the research community and the epistemological renewal of the feld hold a central place. For 20 years, the Canada Research Chair in Community Approaches and Health Inequalities has been a driving force behind the development and recognition of health promotion and population health intervention research as key contributors to increasing population health and reducing health inequality. The International Union for Health Promotion and Education is the only global NGO with a membership composed of decision makers, practitioners and researchers in the feld of health promotion. A meeting focused on “Re-examining and deepening the epistemological foundations of health promotion research; Structuring the research feld” in Montreal, in January 2019, acted as a trigger for the development of the handbook. A call for contributions was launched in April 2020. It was open to the global community of health promotion researchers, defned as individuals and groups interested in advancing health promotion research by refecting and sharing their research practices. One hundred and sixty-fve people from 26 countries from the 5 continents contributed to this collective endeavour! An Open Project Beyond the publication of this handbook, our ambition is to contribute to create a global and sustainable community of health promotion researchers involved in knowledge production and sharing. Recognizing that we cannot pretend to be an exhaustive coverage of all relevant approaches of health promotion research, this handbook is conceived of as an opening for the future and a steppingstone for an ongoing global initiative. As a continuation of the publication of the handbook, a section entitled “Doing health promotion” in the journal Global Health Promotion has been launched. This section will publish introductory-level presentations of paradigms, approaches and methods relevant for health promotion research, making the handbook you hold in your hand the cornerstone of a worldwide effort to strengthen and structure the research feld. With Catherine Chabot, Montréal, Québec, Canada, and Valérie Ivassenko, Clermont-Ferrand, France