”I imagine that they will probably ask about my lifestyle”

Encouraged by recent calls for more locally based public health policy and interventions (Blue, Shove, Carmona & Kelly, 2016), the aim of this ar- ticle is to explore some of the factors that influence why so many ‘at risk’ people do not participate in preventive health checks. We do this by focusing on what health promotion and illness prevention means in the lives of people who are sometimes considered hard to reach with health promotion initiatives. The study is based on a concrete targeted preventive health check intervention, offered to residents in selected neighborhoods characterized by high levels of unemployment and low levels of income (Larsen, Sandbæk, Thomsen & Bjerregaard, 2018), with the speci- fic aim of reducing social differences in health and illness.