There are several strategies to promote health in individuals and populations. Two general approaches to health promotion are behavior change and empowerment. The aim of this article is to present those two kinds of strategies, and show that the behavior change approach has some moral problems, problems that the empowerment approach (on the whole) is better at handling. Two distinct “ideal types” of these practices are presented and scrutinized. Behavior-change interventions use various kinds of theory to target people’s behavior, which they do through information, persuasion, coercion and manipulation. Empowerment is a collaborative method where those “facilitated” participate in the change process. Some ethical problems with the behavior change model are that it does not sufficiently respect the right to autonomy of the individuals involved, and that it risks reducing their ability for autonomy of the individuals involved and risks increasing health inequalities. Empowerment, on the other hand, respects the participant’s right to autonomy, tends to increase the ability for autonomy, as well as increasing other coping skills, and is likely to reduce inequalities. A drawback with the method is that it often takes longer to realize.