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Information about Health Promotion

Health promotion as defined by the World Health Organization is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health.WHO Europe. In the USA, health promotion is much more narrowly conceived as "the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to move toward a state of optimal health.health.[1]

The basic principles of health promotion

According to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion [2] the basic principles of health promotion are as follows:

Prerequisites for health The fundamental conditions and resources for health are peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice and equity. Improvement in health requires a secure foundation in these basic prerequisites.

Advocate Good health is a major resource for social, economic and personal development and an important dimension of quality of life. Political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioural and biological factors can all favour health or be harmful to it. Health promotion action aims at making these conditions favourable through advocacy for health.

Enable Health promotion focuses on achieving equity in health. Health promotion action aims at reducing differences in current health status and ensuring equal opportunities and resources to enable all people to achieve their fullest health potential. This includes a secure foundation in a supportive environment, access to information, life skills and opportunities for making healthy choices. People cannot achieve their fullest health potential unless they are able to take control of those things which determine their health. This must apply equally to women and men.

Mediate The prerequisites and prospects for health cannot be ensured by the health sector alone. More importantly, health promotion demands coordinated action by all concerned: by governments, by health and other social and economic sectors, by nongoverwnental and voluntary organizations, by local authorities, by industry and by the media. People in all walks of life are involved as individuals, families and communities. Professional and social groups and health personnel have a major responsibility to mediate between differing interests in society for the pursuit of health.

Health promotion strategies and programmes should be adapted to the local needs and possibilities of individual countries and regions to take into account differing social, cultural and economic systems.

Health Promotion Action Means:
  • Build healthy public policy
  • Health promotion goes beyond health care. It puts health on the agenda of policy-makers in all sectors and at all levels, directing them to be aware of the health consequences of their decisions and to accept their responsibilities for health.
Health promotion policy combines diverse but complementary approaches including legislation, fiscal measures, taxation and organizational change. It is coordinated action that leads to health, income and social policies that foster greater equity. Joint action contributes to ensuring safer and healthier goods and services, healthier public services, and cleaner, more enjoyable environments.

Health promotion policy requires the identification of obstacles to the adoption of healthy public policies in non-health sectors, and ways of removing them. The aim must be to make the healthier choice the easier choice for policy-makers as well.

Create supportive environments Our societies are complex and interrelated. Health cannot be separated from other goals. The inextricable links between people and their environment constitute the basis for a socioecological approach to health. The overall guiding principle for the world, nations, regions and communities alike is the need to encourage reciprocal maintenance - to take care of each other, our communities and our natural environment. The conservation of natural resources throughout the world should be emphasized as a global responsibility.

Changing patterns of life, work and leisure have a significant impact on health. Work and leisure should be a source of health for people. The way society organizes work should help create a healthy society. Health promotion generates living and working conditions that are safe, stimulating, satisfying and enjoyable.

Systematic assessment of the health impact of a rapidly changing environment - particularly in areas of technology, work, energy production and urbanization is essential and must be followed by action to ensure positive benefit to the health of the public. The protection of the natural and built environments and the conservation of natural resources must be addressed in any health promotion strategy.

Strengthen community action Health promotion works through concrete and effective community action in setting priorities, making decisions, planning strategies and implementing them to achieve better health. At the heart of this process is the empowerment of communities, their ownership and control of their own endeavours and destinies.

Community development draws on existing human and material resources in the community to enhance self-help and social support, and to develop flexible systems for strengthening public participation and direction of health matters. This requires full and continuous access to information, learning opportunities for health, as well as funding support.

Develop personal skills Health promotion supports personal and social development through providing information, education for health and enhancing life skills. By so doing, it increases the options available to people to exercise more control over their own health and over their environments, and to make choices conducive to health.

Enabling people to learn throughout life, to prepare themselves for all of its stages and to cope with chronic illness and injuries is essential. This has to be facilitated in school, home, work and community settings. Action is required through educational, professional, commercial and voluntary bodies, and within the institutions themselves.

Reorient health services The responsibility for health promotion in health services is shared among individuals, community groups, health professionals, health service institutions and governments. They must work together towards a health care system which contributes to the pursuit of health.

The role of the health sector must move increasingly in a health promotion direction, beyond its responsibility for providing clinical and curative services. Health services need to embrace an expanded mandate which is sensitive and respects cultural needs. This mandate should support the needs of individuals and communities for a healthier life, and open channels between the health sector and broader social, political, economic and physical environmental components.

Reorienting health services also requires stronger attention to health research as well as changes in professional education and training. This must lead to a change of attitude and organization of health services, which refocuses on the total needs of the individual as a whole person.

See also

References

  • O'Donnell, Michael, MBA, MPH. "Definition of Health Promotion: Part III: Expanding the Definition." American Journal of Health Promotion. Winter 1989, Vol. 3, No. 3. p. 5.
  • Minkler, M. Ed. Community Organizing & Community Building for Health. Rutgers State University Press, 1997.

External links

In 1948, in its constitution, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" [1].
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Social justice is the quality of a society's generalized right-ness. As there is no objective, known standard of what is just, the term can be amorphous and refer to sometimes self-contradictory values of justice.
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For the sense of a legal doctrine, see .


The term self-help or self-improvement can refer to any case or practice whereby an individual or a group attempts self-guided improvement[1]
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Quality of Life is a 2004 drama film, telling the fictional story of two graffiti writers in the Mission District of San Francisco.
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Equal opportunity is a descriptive term for an approach intended to provide a certain social environment in which people are not excluded from the activities of society, such as education, employment, or health care, on the basis of immutable traits.
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economy is the system of human activities related to the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services of a country or other area.

The composition of a given economy is inseparable from technological evolution, civilization's history and social
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Local governments are administrative offices that are smaller than a state or province. The term is used to contrast with offices that stand naked nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or (where appropriate) federal government.
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In sociology, a group is usually defined as a collection of humans or animals, who share certain characteristics, interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity.
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Health care, or healthcare, is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well being through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions.
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Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing private provision of services.
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natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, is a term that comprises all living and non-living things that occur naturally on Earth or some part of it (e.g. the natural environment in a country).
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Natural resources are naturally occurring substances that are considered valuable in their relatively unmodified (natural) form. A natural resource's value rests in the amount of the material available and the demand for it. The latter is determined by its usefulness to production.
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Occupational safety and health (OSH) is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. As a secondary effect, OSH may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby
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Community development, informally called community building, is a broad term applied to the practices and academic disciplines of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of local communities.
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For the sense of a legal doctrine, see .


The term self-help or self-improvement can refer to any case or practice whereby an individual or a group attempts self-guided improvement[1]
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Social support is the physical and emotional comfort given to us by our family, friends, co-workers and others. It is knowing that we are part of a community of people who love and care for us, and value and think well of us.
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Social change (or Social development) is a general term which refers to:
  • change in the nature, the social institutions, the social behaviour or the social relations of a society, community of people, or other social structures.

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In medicine, a chronic disease is a disease that is long-lasting or recurrent. The term chronic describes the course of the disease, or its rate of onset and development.
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health care system is the organization and the method by which health care is provided. In practice, these systems vary widely from one country to another, and not all health care is delivered by way of a health care system.
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World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of
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Health 21 is the name given to the contents of the 1999 WHO European Region document Health 21 - Health for all in the 21st Century. This document was so-called because it dealt not only with health in the 21st century, but also laid out 21 principles and objectives for
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The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion is a 1986 document produced by the World Health Organization. It was launched at the first international conference for health promotion that was held in Ottawa, Canada.
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Health education is defined as the process by which individuals and groups of people learn to behave in a manner conducive to the promotion, maintenance or restoration of health.
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Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing alongside other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals for a social good. Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned
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Dorothy Bird Nyswander (September 29,1894-December 18,1998), was an American health educator. She graduated with masters and bachelors degrees from the University of Nevada and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
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