Health Promotion- Ch7

Question 1

describe health promotion and its underpinning theoretical and conceptual bases.

Answer 1

HP is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health. Emphasises social, and personal resources and physical capacities. Enables ppl to increase control over their health and its determinants.
Ottawa charters strategies- Advocate, enable (equal opportunity) and Mediate (intersectorial responsibility).
It is the social and political approaches to health development- analyses underlying determinants and works to ameliorate underlying conditions.

Question 2

Describe the settings and contexts in which health promotion is practised.

Answer 2

Ottawa priority areas:
1. build healthy public policy: legislation, fiscal measures, taxation and org changes; identify obstacles to the prevention of healthy public policy.
2. create supportive environments: protection of natural and built environments and conservation of natural resources
3. strengthen community actions: facilitate self help and self support, and public participation- requires access to information and funding support.
4. develop personal skills: to enable ppl to cope with life at all stages.
5. reorient health services: stronger attention to health research, and changes in education and training.
These are a bedrock for Hp practice and are informed by DoH, ecological principles and theories of equity and population health.

Question 3

Explain systems thinking for HP

Answer 3

It is not linear and can not be deduced to cause-effect-fix.
Occurs in a complex but adaptive system of social dynamics.
Systems thinking for HP acknowledge:
- cause and effect are non-linear
- perfect knowledge and forecasting is impossible
-managers are oriented to structures and systems that allow orgs to generate best outcomes
- success comes from learning, and emergent thinking that leads to innovating.
- data measure change
- power relations can affect processes and outcomes
- actions to address are influenced by differing values and goals of stakeholders
- well managed systems approaches are likely to be more effective then individual approaches.
- must be able to work in partnerships- have a place-based approach with all services contributing to the cause- but most initiatives are not used appropriately in an integrated framework and so resources are used inefficiently and a lack of data for measuring change.

Question 4

Identify skills and competencies needed to be an effective health promotion practitioner.

Answer 4

Must be able to work within the setting of problems and accurately measure data.
Partnership continuum- networking, cooperation, coordination, collaboration, integrated partnerships
Partnerships often don’t work because they have not properly articulated the change required. It is important to distinguish:
- impact- what supporters want to achieve
- strategy and logic model
- theory of change- the empirical basis underlying the strategy.