What Is Health Promotion?         

Health Promotion is an approach to improving the health of individuals, communities and populations that builds on two key foundations. These are:

• "Old public health" – regulation and monitoring the natural environment and the control of infectious disease, eg. housing, sanitation, safe water and food supplies
• Health education – where individual responsibility for maintaining health was the focus and key strategies included the provision of information and skills to make healthy choices

Health Promotion encompasses these different approaches but is broader and includes advancement in addressing the social, environmental, economic and cultural determinants of health to achieve population health gain. The Ottawa Charter of 1986 defines health promotion as the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health.

Health encompasses social, emotional and spiritual as well as physical dimensions. Health is seen as a prerequisite that enables people to lead rewarding lives, rather than an end in itself.

The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (developed at the 1^st International Conference in Ottawa, Canada in 1986) describes health promotion as a multi-strategy approach with five priority action areas. These include:

• Can also be referred to as ‘health literacy’: having the information/knowledge, skills and confidence to take action for their own health as well as being informed about health matters

• Community participation in setting priorities, making decisions, planning strategies and implementing them to achieve better health
• The empowerment of communities, their ownership and control of their own endeavours

• Encompasses where people live, their local community, their home, where they work and play, including people’s access to resources for health and opportunities for empowerment

• Buildings in an explicit concern for health and equity in all areas of policy development so that social and physical environments are health enhancing and so healthy choices are made easier

 Reorienting Health Services

• While health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, health services need to consider the resources required to work effectively in the above action areas

The above information taken from "A Basis for Effective Health Promotion in the Northern Metropolitan Region" for full document click here

Written by Prue Worcester, Department of Human Services Northern Metropolitan Region and Yvonne Robinson, Former Director, North East Health Promotion Centre 1998