Health promotion: - definition, principles and strategies. Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion.
Definition:
Health promotion is “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve health”. It is not directed against any particular disease, but is intended to strengthen the host through a variety of approaches.
Principles:
- Health education
—>Large No. of diseases could be prevented with a little or no medical intervention if people were adequately informed about them
- Environmental modification
—>provision of safe water, installation of sanitary latrines, control of insects and rodents, improvement of housing
- Nutritional intervention
—>These comprise food distribution and nutrition improvement of vulnerable groups, child feeding programs, food fortification, nutrition education, etc.
- Lifestyle and behavior changes
—>The action of prevention of this case, is one of individual and community responsibility for health, the physician and in fact each health worker acting as an educator than a therapist.
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion
- is a document published on 21 November 1986 in Ottawa, Canada, at the conclusion of the World Health Organization's (WHO) First International Health Promotion Conference.
- It is considered to be one of the follow-up to the Declaration of Alma-Ata (1978) on basic health care under the WHO Health for All strategy.
- The Charter provides a substantive and methodological integration model to apply and develop different health education, health counseling, health self-help and preventative medicine strategies