Health Promotion Research Paper

Health Promotion = Healthy Public Policy x Health Education.

The term “healthy public policy” is borrowed from the Ottawa Charter (1986). The principles of health promotion are developed in the Ottawa Charter which outlines these areas as important for health promotion:

1. Building a healthy public policy,
2. Creating supportive environments,
3. Developing personal skills,
4. Strengthening community action,
5. Reorientation of health services.

The WHO (World Health Organisation) does distinguish between health promotion and prevention; health education is seen as an integral part of health promotion in conjunction with the field of prevention.

The development of health education lies in the nineteenth century when epidemic disease

‘The term health promotion and health education are not interchangeable. Health Promotion covers all aspects of these activities which seek to improve the health status of individuals and communities. It therefore includes both health education and all attempts to produce environmental and legislative change conducive to good health. Put another way, health promotion is concerned with making healthier choices, easier choices’.
(Dennis et al 1982)

‘Defining and planning health promotion makes a distinction between health education, prevention and health protection’. (Downie et al 1990)

One of the main domains in which Health Promotion Officers work is in secondary schools advising pupils about important aspects of their life including healthy eating, taking regular exercise, safe sex and hygiene.

The origins of formal health promotion as a modern movement lie in the World Health Organisation declaration of 1946 that “health is not merely the absence of disease, but a state of complete physical, mental and social

This might aim to encourage people to change their own behaviour or to change the wider environment. This might include going on a reduction diet if they are risking becoming obese, clinically obese or morbidly obese.

Katherine Weare (1992) maintains that enabling people to be autonomous is a fundamental goal of education.

Regarding the obesity crisis it’s entirely up to the individual to make healthy choices. However many “autonomous” people make unhealthy choices. This book is aimed towards helping people make healthy choices, if they wish to be educated about food and nutrition not just to improve the health of the individual but to improve self-esteem and self awareness by taking charge of their own health.

Its another one of Britain’s social problems that thousands of parents in the U.K. are not sending their children to school, but claim to be educating them at home. What do these irresponsible parents know academically? Very little. They are just too lazy to get up in the mornings to get their children into uniforms to send them to school, which is unreal in 21st century Britain. It is unfortunately the poor and the vulnerable who are suffering in modern