Health Promotion
A behavioral, social science that draws from the biological, environmental, psychological, physical, and medical sciences, health promotion uses education-driven voluntary behavior change activities to promote health and prevent disease, disability, and premature death. Health promotion is a social and behavioral science branch that focuses on behavior change. The creation of solutions at the individual, group, institutional, community, and systemic levels to increase health knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behavior is what we mean when discussing health promotion. The objective of health promotion is to have a positive impact both on the health behaviors of individuals and communities.
What is health promotion?
Scholars define it as the process of empowering individuals to exert a more significant influence on and take more responsibility for their health is referred to as health promotion. It shifts away from concentrating on an individual’s actions and instead looks at various social and environmental interventions.
Health promotion is one of the essential functions of public health since it assists people, communities, and governments in addressing and coping with various health concerns. This may be done by developing pro-health public policies, cultivating supportive surroundings, and working to improve both individual capabilities and those of the community.
The following are the primary focuses of health promotion practice health promotion:
- Enhancing the capacity for health promotion (funding and infrastructure); fostering healthier lifestyles and behaviors.
- Encouraging urban health (including healthy cities and health equality via the Urban HEART program);
- Establishing additional healthy locations, such as schools and places of employment, as well as healthy islands; and
- Increasing one’s level of health literacy
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
The objective of health promotion and illness prevention initiatives is to keep individuals healthy. The goal of health promotion programs is to encourage and empower people and communities to select healthy habits and implement changes that minimize the likelihood of acquiring chronic illnesses and other morbidities.
The distinction between disease prevention and health promotion is that disease prevention focuses on specific measures to reduce the incidence and severity of chronic illnesses and other morbidities.
Wellness is associated with health promotion and the prevention of illness. Wellness is an individual’s attitudes and actions that lead to beneficial health behaviors and results.
Social determinants of health, which affect modifiable risk behaviors, are often addressed in health promotion and disease prevention initiatives. Social determinants of health are the economic, social, cultural, and political situations that individuals are born into, grow up in, and live in that influence their health status. Tobacco use, poor dietary habits, and lack of physical exercise are modifiable risk behaviors contributing to chronic illness development.
Typical health promotion, illness prevention, and wellness program activities include the following:
- Raising public awareness of healthy practices via communication. Public service announcements, health fairs, campaigns in the mass media, and newsletters are examples of communication tactics.
- Education enables behavior modification and action via more excellent knowledge. Courses, training, and support groups are all examples of health education techniques.
- Policy, Systems, and Environment: Making systemic changes – via better laws, rules, and regulations (policy), functioning organizational components (systems), and the economic, social, or physical environment – to promote, make accessible, and allow healthy choices.
Health Promotion Strategies
There are many approaches to health promotion, the most fundamental of which are communication and education about health and policy and institutional and environmental changes.
- Health communication helps individuals better understand their health requirements and equips them to make important personal choices about their health. The promotion of healthier behaviors and an increase in health literacy are both outcomes of effective verbal and written health communication. Additionally, it helps bridge the knowledge gap between cultural factors and health concerns. Posters encouraging people to get flu shots, booklets advertising health exams, and conversations with patients about cardiovascular conditions are all examples of health communications.
- People are educated about various diseases and disorders via health education to improve the likelihood of early detection and treatment. These learning sessions often center on the groups that are being targeted. For instance, to prevent or treat type 2 diabetes, communities with higher poverty rates may be good candidates for diet and physical exercise education.
- Changes in policy, systems, and environments (abbreviated as PSEs) are the last component of the fundamental health promotion strategies. A policy change would entail making entryways smoke-free and installing safety devices in the Workplace. Systems transformation refers to altering how health issues are addressed by implementing new ideas, technology, or certifications. Changes in the environment contribute to the resolution of population health problems by increasing the number of parks and the availability of healthy food.
Health Promotion Examples
The following are some Examples of Health Promotion;
- Providing More Opportunities for Physical Activity and Expanding Access to Healthy Foods
Weight gain, cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers may all be helped to be avoided by maintaining a balanced diet and engaging in regular physical exercise. However, just around one in ten persons in the United States consumes an adequate number of fruits and vegetables. Nine out of ten Americans have a salt intake higher than what is considered healthy. In addition, only 54% of adults obtain the recommended amount of aerobic physical exercise, and around 74% of people are overweight or obese.
- Changes in lifestyle, as well as disease management programs, need to be promoted.
People at high risk of acquiring a chronic illness or who already have a chronic disease may engage in programs authorized by the CDC that help them lower their risk or keep their condition under control. These programs are available to people in both groups. Participants in these programs are provided with the opportunity to learn and practice healthy habits under the direction and mentoring of professionals.
- The Avoidance of Excessive Use of Alcohol
Drinking to excess is a leading cause of mortality in the United States, accounting for more than 95,000 fatalities annually and cutting the lives of individuals who drink to excess short by an average of 29 years. Drinking to excess is related to one fatality in every ten that occur among working-age individuals and cost the United States of America $249 billion in 2010.
- Supporting the Sexual and Reproductive Health of Women
Women whose health is compromised by illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, or obesity have a greater chance of experiencing pregnancy-related difficulties and may even be unable to conceive a child altogether.
Health Promotion Model
Health Promotion Theories seek to explain the causes underpinning motivation to participate in health-promoting activities and focus on people’s interactions with their physical and interpersonal surroundings during health improvement efforts.
Pender’s Health Promotion Model
Nola J. Pender conceived the Health Promotion Model as a “complementary alternative to models of health protection” as she worked on its development. Instead of only being defined as the absence of sickness, health is characterized here as a dynamic and favorable condition. The goal of any health promotion effort should be to improve a patient’s overall sense of well-being. The health promotion model explains the multifaceted character of people as they engage with one another and their environments to achieve health.
The aspects of individual qualities and experiences, behavior-specific cognitions and feelings, and behavioral outcomes are the primary focal points of Pender’s model. According to this hypothesis, each individual has a distinct set of unique features and experiences that influence later acts. There is significant importance in terms of motivational relevance attached to collecting variables about behavior-specific knowledge and emotion. The nursing interventions have the potential to alter the variables. Because health-promoting behavior is the targeted behavioral goal, the Health Promotion Model concludes with this behavioral consequence as its endpoint. At every stage of development, engaging in these activities ought to result in more excellent health, increased functional ability, and an overall improvement in quality of life. The ultimate behavioral demand is also impacted by the immediate competing demand and preferences, which has the potential to derail behaviors that are meant to promote healthy living.
Individual qualities and experiences, previous conduct, and the frequency of the identical activity in the past are the primary ideas that underpin the Health Promotion Model. Effects, both direct and indirect, on the probability of participating in actions that are beneficial to one’s health.
Biological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects of a person’s life are the components that make up their factors. These parameters may accurately anticipate a specific behavior since they are molded by the characteristics of the conduct that is the focus of the current investigation. Variables under the “biological, personal factors” category include age, gender, body mass index, pubertal state, aerobic capacity, strength, agility, or balance. Variables that fall under the category of personal psychological factors include self-esteem, personal motivation, personal competence, and perceptions of one’s health state and concept of health.
The predicted beneficial results that are thought to result from healthy conduct are referred to as the perceived advantages of action. The expected, imagined, or real roadblocks and expenses associated with comprehending certain conduct are perceived barriers to action. The judgment or personal aptitude to arrange and carry out a behavior that is beneficial to one’s health is known as perceived self-efficacy. Because of the relationship between perceived self-efficacy and perceived obstacles to action, greater levels of perceived self-efficacy result in lower perceived hurdles to the execution of the activity.
The subjective pleasant or destructive emotion that develops due to the stimulus qualities of the activity being performed is referred to as activity-related affect. They affect self-efficacy, which may mean that the more favorable the subjective sensation, the stronger the sense of efficacy. In the same vein, enhanced emotions of effectiveness have the potential to create a further good effect.
The cognitive processes that concern the actions, beliefs, or attitudes of others are known as interpersonal influences. Norms, which may be defined as the expectations of important people, social support, which can be defined as both instrumental and emotional encouragement, and modeling are all examples of interpersonal influences (vicarious learning through observing others engaged in a particular behavior). Families, classmates, and healthcare professionals are the primary groups that play a role in forming interpersonal effects.
Personal views and thoughts may help or hinder conduct, which is what we mean when talking about situational impacts. They include views of the many possibilities that are accessible, as well as demand characteristics and aesthetic qualities of the location where a particular health-promoting activity is suggested to take place. Situational factors have the potential to either directly or indirectly affect health-related behavior.
Commitment to a plan of action is part of the behavioral result. It refers to the idea of intention and the recognition of a planned strategy that will lead to the execution of healthy behavior. In this context, “competing demands” refers to alternative behaviors that people have little control over due to external circumstances such as the duties associated with employment or family caregiving. Individuals can exercise a high level of control over their competing desires, which are alternative behaviors.
Positive health outcomes include optimum well-being, personal satisfaction, and productive life. Health-promoting behavior is the endpoint or action to achieve these positive health outcomes.
Health Promotion in Nursing Practice
Historically, health care systems have emphasized illness treatment more than disease prevention and early detection. The evolution toward efficient preventative methods is becoming more relevant in light of the current state of the health care industry. Using research supported by evidence and making suggestions to enhance patients’ health is the nurse’s responsibility in preventive health care. The support and education that registered nurses provide to patients pave the way for patients to possibly get preventive treatments such as counseling, tests, and prophylactic procedures or drugs. Nurses are the driving force behind healthier living. Nurses are uniquely positioned to inspire others to adopt healthier lives through education, to mentor, and taking the initiative.
A clinical judgment about motivation and desire to promote well-being and realize human health potential is what is meant when we say that a health promotion nursing diagnosis has been made. The patient’s willingness to improve specific health habits is one way these reactions are exhibited.
Community Health Promotion
In addition to treating injuries and illnesses, hospitals play an essential role in the communities in which they are located and provide a wide range of other services. The health of the communities they serve is increasingly becoming the responsibility of hospitals, assisting residents in improving their health and maintaining it throughout the year.
In addition to providing acute treatment when required, your hospital also offers several health promotion programs to meet the many health needs of the community it serves.
The programs probably will:
- Attend to fundamental concerns such as the provision of food, housing, and education.
- Encourage individuals to adopt better ways of living one step at a time.
- Reduce the obstacles that prevent people from getting necessary medical tests and services.
- Make it possible for individuals to better their lives by giving them the opportunity.
It is important to note that Public Health Promotion in the community is a process of enhancing and safeguarding the general population’s health, including people, populations, and communities. It is possible to accomplish disease prevention and health promotion by participating in Health Promotion Activities and programs that have been planned and intended to enhance a population’s overall health.
Health Education vs. Health Promotion can help stipulate the difference between Health Education and Health Promotion. While health education encourages people to voluntarily change their behavior by increasing their awareness, knowledge, skills, beliefs, attitudes, and values, health promotion uses strategies that require individuals to change their behaviors.
Health Promotion Topics
Some health promotion topics include the following;
- Minimizing potential dangers in the Workplace
- Using birth control while engaging in sexual activity
- Maintaining good personal cleanliness and avoiding the use of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and illicit substances
- Ensure that you take all of the vaccinations that are advised before going to a particular country or condition
Conclusion
The process of empowering individuals to exert a more significant influence on and take more responsibility for their health is called health promotion. It shifts away from concentrating on an individual’s actions and instead looks at various social and environmental interventions. Health promotion is one of the essential functions of public health since it assists people, communities, and governments in addressing and coping with various health concerns. This may be done by developing pro-health public policies, cultivating supportive surroundings, and working to improve both individual capabilities and those of the community.
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