Branches
Health Promotion
Population Health Field
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The branch of health work concerned with enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. Its founding statement is the Ottawa Charter, presented at the first International Conference on Health Promotion in 1986, which treats health as a resource for everyday life rather than the objective of living and reaches beyond healthy lifestyles to wellbeing. Health promotion action aims at making political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioural and biological conditions favourable to health through advocacy, and at equity in health, reducing differences in health status and securing equal opportunities and resources for all people to achieve their fullest health potential. The Charter holds that this cannot be delivered by the health sector alone: it demands coordinated action by governments, health and other social and economic sectors, nongovernmental and voluntary organizations, local authorities, industry and the media.
Facts
Central QuestionHow can people and communities be enabled to increase control over the conditions that determine their health, rather than only being treated when those conditions fail? 1 Key DebateHealth promotion's own founding theorist framed the field as a challenge to biomedicine's pathogenic, dichotomous view of health, proposing instead a salutogenic continuum running from illness toward wellness; how far the field has actually shifted from a disease focused paradigm toward that continuum model remains debated. 2 Key DebateHow much of health promotion is individual behaviour change and how much is action on political, economic and environmental conditions. The Ottawa Charter takes a position, that the field goes beyond healthy lifestyles to wellbeing and is not just the responsibility of the health sector, and practice has kept re-opening the balance ever since. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Equity in health is named by the Ottawa Charter as a focus of health promotion action.
The Charter is the founding statement of the health promotion field and carries its standing definition.
The World Health Organization convened the first International Conference on Health Promotion at Ottawa in 1986 and carries the Charter and the conference series.
Includes
Sources
1. World Health Organization Official Site
World Health OrganizationOttawa Charter, first global conference on health promotionQuote, Ottawa Charter, first global conference on health promotion
Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond healthy life-styles to well-being.
1. World Health Organization Official Site
World Health OrganizationIncludes: Smoking Cessation Support, Fact sheet: Tobacco, demand reduction framingView the Source 2. Wikipedia: Salutogenesis
WikipediaModel descriptionQuote, Model description
Antonovsky identifies the dominant paradigm of Western medicine as pathogenic, which in turn leads to an understanding of health as dichotomous - one is either healthy or sick.
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