Health Promotion

9 Pages 2170 Words

anisation’s (WHO) definition which can imply victim blaming (Naidoo & Wills, 1999) suggesting that individuals have the ability to control their own health matters regardless of greater social influence. The WHO definition states that:
“Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health.” (World Health Organization, 1986:2).

Whitehead (2004) defines health education as a more individual approach. This reflects the WHO definition of health promotion on grounds of individualism. The definition states that health education is;
“…an activity that seeks to inform the individual on the nature and causes of health/illness and the individual’s personal level of risk associated with their lifestyle-related behaviour…”
Following the redefining of health promotion and health education Whitehead (2004) has criticised the health promotion plan devised by Ewles & Simnett (1999). Ewles & Simnett (1999) suggest that the five step plan for health promotion broadly speaking include medical, preventative, educational, empowerment and socio-political approaches. For reason described in the definition stages, Whitehead feels that medical and preventative measures should be deal with in health education. He justifies this by noting that most nursing health related curriculum takes place under the auspices of a medical or preventative approach. Empowerment and socio-political issues should be dealt with in health promotion, while education serves to assist in both the health promotion arena as well as in the health education arena and therefore falls in the middle. This educational concept is what has allowed nurses to be involved in health promotion in the past.
So currently while nurses consider themselves as health promotion initiators it is a theoretical standpoint and not actually practiced as there is little nursing evidence which supports a direct impact on socio-polit...