Health Promotion

By

Nicole Wallis

“Skin cancers are the most common forms of cancers in New Zealand. The mortality rate from skin cancer is among the highest in the world”. (Cancer Society, 2015). This essay will explain how health promotion and the Ottawa Charter are seen throughout the Cancer Society’s Sun Smart Schools Programme, using many different approaches and strategies of health promotion for this to be achieved. The sun protection programme has played a very important role in changing society’s attitudes which has meant the reduction in sun exposure.

Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health. Health defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO, 1978) is “a state of complete physical, mental

There have been many strategies created to improve the health of the population as a whole, not just of the individual. Health promotions approaches and strategies range from individually focussed interventions (such as posters providing positive health messages) through to the development of natural health promoting policies (such as the Sun Smart Schools Programme). The aim of promotion is for everyone to have access to health and to reduce inequalities thus increasing opportunities to improve health; for this to be achieved a change in the public and industry policies meaning that they will be more relevant to health.

“The path through the health promotion story is complex, since health promotion practices range along a broad continuum” These can be put into two groups. The conservative end of the health promotion is named ‘Individualist Health Promotion (IPH)’ and the other end of the continuum is called ‘structuralism- collectivist health promotion (SCHP)’. IPH is about health education about lifestyle change. However SCHP is about participatory health programmes at the community

Good health is a key resource for social, economic, personal development and very important dimension for the quality of life. There are many factors which can harm or favour health and these are Economic, social, political, environmental, behavioural, cultural and biological factors. The aim is to make these conditions favourable; this is done through the strategy of advocacy for health. The strategy of enabling recognises that achieving equity in health is a focus for health promotion. It aims to reduce the differences in current health status and to ensure that equal opportunities and resources are available to allow all people to be able to achieve their full health potential; including access to information, life skills, support and opportunities to be able to make informed and healthy choices. Finally, the strategy of mediate is about the prerequisites and prospects for health which cannot be ensure just by the health sector. Health promotion means coordinated action by all concerned, including health sectors, governments, economic sectors, industry and the media.

Health Promotion can also work across several different settings. “A setting refers to a socially and culturally defined geographical and physical area of factual social interaction, and a socially and culturally defined set of patterns of interaction to be performed while in the setting” (Wenzel, 1997). Health is promoted where people