OBJECTIVES: To identify preventive interventions, not systematically implemented, that may be cost-effective in reducing the burden of disease in the Netherlands.  METHODS: Review of the literature. To select which interventions to include, a two-step approach was followed. In the first step, a longlist with possible interventions was created, based on a systematic search of the economic evaluations of relative new preventive interventions. In the second step, all interventions that a) were not systematically implemented in the Netherlands during the study; b) were relevant for the Dutch situation; and c) had at least three high quality economic evaluations with base case ICERs of around or below € 20,000 per QALY gained, were selected. For all included interventions a general appraisal of four aspects (effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, transferability and feasibility for implementation) was performed. RESULTS: Twenty-eight preventive interventions were included. Twenty-two of these were from the field of disease prevention, including eight vaccinations and seven screening programmes. Three interventions concerned health promotion, and three interventions concerned health protection. Remarkably, the majority of the included interventions lacked a convincing evidence-base for effectiveness. The results were generally not directly transferable to the Dutch context and there were considerable concerns with respect to implementation of these interventions in the Netherlands.  CONCLUSIONS: Only 20% of the included preventive interventions were from the domain of health promotion or health protection. This proportion reflects the lack of economic evaluations in these domains of prevention, not that interventions in these domains are generally not cost-effective. Evidence of cost-effectiveness of preventive interventions in foreign countries can poorly support policy decision making at the national and local level.