Workshop/Workbook 10

Question 1

What is empowerment?

Answer 1

• The power to make decisions about the future based on knowledge, optimism, strength, self-confidence and about where you feel you should be positioned in life

Question 2

How can health professionals facilitate empowerment for Aboriginal people?

Answer 2

No one can empower anyone else, but health professionals can aid in facilitating empowerment by:

• Making sure we can provide resources for empowerment
• Reassuring patients when in doubt and giving them confidence
• Providing them with education
• Giving them options to make free choices
• Ensuring that as a health professional, you are always challenging yourself to find the right way to empower others

Question 3

What is health promotion?

Answer 3

• educational, organisational, economic, social and political actions
• enable people to increase control over and improve their health
• done through attitude, behaviour, social and environmental changes

Question 4

What are the three preventative levels of health promotion?

Answer 4

Primary: avoiding the development of a disease e.g. immunisation

Secondary: focusing on early disease detection and implementation of interventions to prevent disease progression and emergence of symptoms. e.g. cervical screening

Tertiary: reduces the negative impact of an already established disease by restoring function and reducing disease-related complications e.g. a person known to have a chronic condition such as diabetes

Question 5

What are the Ottowa Charter’s five priority areas for health promotion?

Answer 5

• Building healthy public policy:
  e. g. introducing the tobacco tax to make cigarettes more expensive, therefore promoting a healthier lifestyle
• Creating supportive environments:
  e. g. quit smoking groups at work provide confidence to those involved and a feeling that quitting is possible with people to support you the whole way through
• Strengthening community action:
  e. g. facilitating community ownership and control to help them quit smoking and build their empowerment
• Developing personal skills
  smaller scale, focusing on individuals or small groups, e.g. high school health education
• Reorienting the health services:
  e. g. health professionals supporting patients to quit, giving them reassuring, education and confidence

Question 6

How to achieve successful health promotion with Aboriginal people and communities

Answer 6

• Ask the community type of health promotion they would like, the topics of interest, how to go about choosing the target issue and how they would like a program to be implemented (it is not appropriate to do this planning alone)
• Consultation is vital in order to engage with an Aboriginal community. This is necessary because they need to have ownership in order for it to be successful.
• A local Aboriginal advisory group is necessary as this will represent the community and will advise and liaise.
• Keep it light hearted, humour is an important part of Aboriginal society.
• Send clear straight forward messages, use simple language, limit the amount of reading material and use Aboriginal art, music, colours, language and slang. This makes the program relevant.
• Make it as practical and hands on as possible. Some compensation should be provided to the Aboriginal participants/community for their time.