Ottawa Charter

INTRODUCTION
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion 1986 was established to provide a foundation for implementation of health promotion in health care. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion is the focus of this essay and the purpose is to demonstrate a clear understanding of the importance of health promotion, health literacy, health education and how they relate to empowerment and the role of health professionals. To aid with this, this essay will refer to the health promotion concept of a community garden to help fight hypertension through obesity. The concept of the community garden will be related back to the charter to provide a clear correlation to the principles of the charter and the nurses role in health promotion. ("OTTAWA CHARTER
The aspiration behind The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion is to achieve health for all by 2000 and beyond, driven by a health promotion focus on an international level. ("The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion", 1986) WHO defines health in their Constitution of the World Health Organisation: Principles as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. (WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION,
The concept community garden helps mediate relationships between the community members and the community they reside in, by providing a sense of belonging and encouraging further engagement. The relationship between participants and health promoters/organisers is a key element of health promotion in this concept of a community garden and it is important to note this should be incorporated into the program from the outset of the planning stages. (Talbot, L., & Verrinder, G. 2014). Incorporating all of the above-mentioned strategies the program has great potential to be a successful community health promotion program. This is based on the premise that it consists of the ability to empower through providing access to healthy foods and opportunity to learn how to obtain these foods self-sufficiently. This potential for success is demonstrated in a study by Hartwig, K.A. & Mason, M. J (2016) on a church community garden showing an increase of daily fresh food intake by 14% of the program participants when comparing pre