What is health promotion?
Health promotion is helping people to take control over their own health which will help to improve their wellbeing. Health promotion also addresses the major health challenges faced by developing and developed countries, including communicable and non-communicable diseases and issues related to human health and development. Health promotion is not something that is done on or to people; it is done by, with and for people either as individuals or as groups. Health promotion applies to a wide range of approaches to improving health of people, communities and populations. But whatever the particular focus of health promotion work, health promotion needs to be grounded in firm principles and philosophy. Health promotion involves people working face to face with individuals, groups and communities to more strategic work such as policy development. The work is much more than simply advising or persuading individuals to make lifestyle changes and includes: * Organisational Development - developing organisations to be more health promoting e.g. in Schools, Workplaces and Hospitals. * Community Development - developing communities to be more health promoting e.g. neighbourhoods, cultural communities and communities of interest * Strategy Development - developing a strategic approach to improving health and ensuring that local, regional and national policies that can affect public health do so in a health promoting way. * Personal Development - developing the personal, emotional, and social skills and abilities of lay and professional people in order for them to maximise their own health and build a health promoting capacity for those around them * Partnership Development - developing partnerships with key people, communities and organisations who can affect or influence public health, and to enable these partnerships to be better able to promote health * Health Information - developing ways of providing