About Health Promotion

“Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health.”
- Nutbeam & Kickbusch, 1998

The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion was a product of the First International Conference on Health Promotion, held in Ottawa in 1986. It was produced at a time when individuals throughout the world were calling for a paradigm shift on how we look at health. Within the Charter, a vision and mission for health promotion professionals was born. Through a health promotion lens, health is viewed as a resource built through:

Empowerment. Individuals and communities of individuals can gain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to improve the health status of themselves and each other. Healthcare professionals can gain the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and resources to advocate for public health policy.
Equity. The knowledge, skills, and attitudes of an individual is only part of what shapes that person's health. The social determinants of health, namely where a person works, plays, and lives, also plays a role in shaping that person's health. These determinants can be addressed on a population level to improve the health status of many. Programs and services can allocate resources to minimize the impact of the social determinants of health on an individual's health outcomes.
Community. Health happens outside of hospitals. Healthy communities are a result of collaborative partnerships in and between all levels: individual, family, neighbourhood, municipality, province, and country. Education, government, healthcare, residents, and non-profit sectors all have a role to play in addressing the social determinants of health and building healthy communities. Health promotion professionals are able to act as mediators in this process.

Health promotion professionals in Canada are invited to become members of Health Promotion Canada, an association with a mission to advance the practice of health promotion nationally. As part of its advocacy work, members developed a set of pan-Canadian health promoter competencies. This document perhaps offers the best description of the scope of a health promotion professional in Canada. Key competencies listed in the statement include:

Draw upon a multi-disciplinary base of core concepts, principles, theory and research to understand health issues and inform health promotion action.
Partner with communities to conduct a situational assessment for a health issue to assess needs, strengths and opportunities in the context of health determinants and health equity.
Working with stakeholders, develop a plan to achieve measureable health promotion goals and objectives based on a situational assessment’s findings.
Reflecting community needs, contribute to the development of, and advocacy for, policies to improve health and reduce inequities.
Facilitate community mobilization and build community capacity around shared health priorities.
Work collaboratively with partners and across sectors to enhance the impact and sustainability of health promotion action.
Communicate health promotion information effectively with diverse audiences using appropriate approaches and technologies.
Interact effectively with diverse individuals, groups and communities to promote health and reduce health inequities.
Provide leadership within employing organization to build health promotion capacity and performance including team and individual level learning. (Health Promotion Canada, 2015)

Health promotion professionals work with populations that span the entire life cycle. They are most often employed by public health departments and non-profit organizations. Examples of health promotion programs in Alberta include Best Beginning, Alberta Family Wellness Initiative, and Healthier Together. For more information on health promotion and for tools to use in health promotion work, please visit my Resources page.

References

Government of Canada. (2018). Social determinants of health and health inequalities. Retrieved from https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/population-health/what-determines-health.html.

Health Promotion Canada. (2015). Health Promoter Competencies’ Statements. Retrieved from https://www.healthpromotioncanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015-HPComp-CompletePackage3-new-logo.pdf.

Nutbeam, D., & Kickbusch, I. (1998). Health promotion glossary. Health Promotion International. 13(4), 349–364. doi: 10.1093/heapro/13.4.349.

World Health Organisation. (1986). Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion: First International Conference on Health Promotion Ottawa, 21 November 1986. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/ottawa/en/.