My role in Canada’s health system

If my role in Canada's health system could be summarized in an image, I believe it would be found in the interface of health, advocacy, and education. This is the spot where health promotion professionals find their niche.

Figure 1. Visual depiction of my role in Canada's health system

I had not yet heard the term “health promotion professional” when I signed up to be a part of Health Canada’s Youth Advisory Committee on Tobacco Cessation as a teen. Reflecting on the journey I have taken over the past two decades, I now realize that my volunteer experiences, training, and career choices have truly prepared me to take on my current role as Health Promotion Consultant with the Best Beginning Program in Alberta Health Services (AHS). Today, I combine the knowledge, skills and passion I developed through my Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Education degrees to empower individuals to live healthier lives.

Health promotion professionals are relatively new kids on the block. The profession of health promotion was officially born in 1986, when the World Health Organization lead the signing of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. The 1974 Canadian framework by Lalonde that lead to the Ottawa Charter, A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians, is considered one of the foundational documents leading to the formation of health promotion. This work lead to a paradigm shift in healthcare that enables individuals to gain the knowledge and skills needed to improve their own health. To learn more about the profession, I encourage you to read my About Health Promotion page.

Health promotion is considered a public health discipline. According to the Alberta Public Health Association (APHA), public health can be defined as “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations public and private, communities and individuals” (Alberta Public Health Association, 2015). Health promotion professionals can come from many different backgrounds. While there are some universities that offer graduate programs in health promotion, such as the University of Alberta, current job postings for health promotion professionals list a range of acceptable education options. When applying for my position, any of the following education requirements would have been accepted for the role of health promotion consultant: Master of Health Promotion, Master of Public Health, Master of Population Health, Master of Health Education or a related field. Unlike nurses, physicians, and many other clinical roles, there is no regulating college that oversees the training, scope, and responsibilities of health promotion professionals. In the absence of a regulating college, health promotion professionals must turn to their employers for guidance on professional practice.

As a health promotion professional working for AHS, my guiding documents are the same as all professionals working for the organization. I have highlighted an example of how I use these guiding documents to develop a professional online identity in a recent blog post. An additional guiding document that I find useful in daily practice is the Professional Practice in Action: A guide to professional practice at Alberta Health Services (AHS, 2016). The document outlines the specific actions that must be taken by individual employees and the collective organization to achieve the goal of “caring, competent, committed healthcare professionals collaborating to create quality outcomes and positive patient and family experiences” (AHS, 2016). With such a robust collection of guiding documents provided by my employer, I feel well supported in my efforts to work in a professional and ethical manner.

What health promotion professionals do have access to is a professional association. Whereas professional colleges exist to ensure the best interests of the public through regulation of the profession, professional associations work towards the interests of the profession and its members. An association is the voice of the profession, providing education, professional development, and advocacy support to its members. Health Promotion Canada (HPC) is the association representing the interests of health promotional professionals in Canada. They are currently working to produce supportive tools to help its members advance the profession in every province and territory. In 2015, HPC released the Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies. I list the competencies on my About Health Promotion page. Together, these competencies describe an evidence-informed and collaborative professional who uses a population health approach to plan, implement, and evaluate health promotion initiatives in the communities they live and work in. They also describe a professional who is skilled at health communication, policy development, inclusion, and community capacity building. Not all associations lay out the values of their profession, but HPC does describe the core values of the health promotion profession as described in Allegrante et al. (2009). These core values are:

• a social-ecologic model of health that takes into account the cultural, economic, and social determinants of health;

• a commitment to equity, civil society and social justice;

• a respect for cultural diversity and sensitivity;

• a dedication to sustainable development; and

• a participatory approach to engaging the population in identifying needs, setting priorities, and planning, implementing, and evaluating the practical and feasible health promotion solutions to address needs.

I am fortunate to live out the core values of the health promotion profession in my role as Health Promotion Consultant for Best Beginning. The Best Beginning program is a voluntary health promotion program for low-income pregnant women and adolescent pregnant women of all income levels. We are an inclusive, culturally diverse program that provides multicultural outreach workers and translation services to clients who require this support. We provide social supports to clients that are vulnerable to poor health outcomes on the basis of the social determinants of health. As Health Promotion Consultant, I ensure the health information we provide our clients is evidence-based, current, and keeping with best practice guidelines. I also evaluate our program to ensure we are addressing health inequities in the context of a prenatal support program to the best of our abilities. This is my role in the healthcare system. I am an educator, advocate, evaluator, and mediator. I feel incredibly lucky to have a role that I feel so passionate about.

References

Alberta Health Services. (2016). Professional Practice in Action: A guide to professional practice at Alberta Health Services. Retrieved from https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/about/msd/ahs-msd-com-ppa-guid-professional-practice-guide.pdf

Alberta Public Health Association. (2015). What is Public Health? Retrieved from https://www.apha.ab.ca/What-is-Public-Health

Allegrante et al. (2009). Domains of core competency, standards, and quality assurance for building global capacity in health promotion: The Galway Consensus Conference Statement. Health Education & Behaviour. 36(3):476-482. doi: 10.1177/1090198109333950

Canada., & Lalonde, M. (1974). A new perspective on the health of Canadians: A working document. Ottawa. Retrieved from http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ph-sp/pdf/perspect-eng.pdf

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

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/.