Summary

In this Study Session, you have learned that:

• Health promotion, "the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health" can be considered as an umbrella term that incorporates many activities.
• Health promotion is any planned combination of educational, political, environmental, regulatory, or organisational mechanisms that support actions and conditions of living conducive to the health of individuals, groups, and communities.
• Improvement in health requires a secure foundation in these basic prerequisites. Advocacy, enabling and mediating.
• Principles of health promotion are based on a positive view of health definition:
  1. Health promotion involves the population as a whole,
  2. Health promotion is directed towards action on the determinants or cause of health,
  3. Health promotion aims, particularly at effective and concrete public participation.
• Major actions of health promotions are the following:
  1. Formulating healthy public policy.
  2. Reorienting health service.
  3. Empowering communities to achieve well-being.
  4. Creating supportive environment and
  5. Developing /increasing personal health skills
• Major areas of concern for health promotion are the following:
  
  • Health improvement needs development of a conducive environment.
  • Health promotion involves the strengthening of social networks and social support.
  • Health promotion fosters a healthy lifestyle.
  • Health promotion is based on strong health education
  • The focus of health promotion is access to health.
• Health education is one of the most important components of health promotion. It is a mean of promoting health. Health promotion is a structural (laws, regulation, organisational...) support for health education to develop its full potential /maintained for a long period.