The shift in health care focus towards an emphasis on population health gains via health promotion is now well established. One of the strategies that has been promoted as a means of better addressing the shortcomings in delivering health care that attends more specifically to preventative and promotion activities has been the description and piloting of a new nursing role, the family health nurse. This paper examines the ways in which this new nursing role is enmeshed in practices of governmentality and biopower. The role has the potential to elicit 'health gain' by means of the highly interventive nature of parts of the role. But this very intensity also raises questions about the ways in which coercive power and individual liberties are negotiated.