Case 1 BHE Health Promotion. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

It is widely known that prevention is better than cure. However according to another quote, “the greatest medicine is to teach people how not to need it”. And that is where health promotion comes in. Health promotion, as defined by the Ottawa Charter, is “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health (WHO, 1986)”. On the other hand, disease prevention is composed of services and activities that aims to reduce disease occurrence and its associated risks (WHO, 2019). We can see here that health promotion encompasses disease prevention, as it empowers the people over their general wellbeing; seeing health as a means to full life rather than being just the opposite of illness (Povlsen and Borup, 2015).
Ottawa Charter and Jakarta Declaration on Health Promotion
The Ottawa Charter (1986) paved the way for health promotion. It emphasized the role of equity, involvement and empowerment of different sectors towards health improvement. It also identified five health promotion actions that include the following: 1) build public policies regarding covering all sectors and different government offices; 2) create conducive workplace and living spaces; 3) boost public participation; 4) enhance health and life skills; 5) align healthcare services to health promotion actions (Fry and Zask, 2016; WHO, 1986).
The Ottawa Charter Conference on health promotion held in Canada was then followed by a number of international meetings held in Adelaide, Australia (1988), Sundsvall, Sweden (1991), Jakarta, Indonesia (1997), Mexico City, Mexico (2000), Bangkok, Thailand (2005) and Nairobi, Kenya (2009) (Kumar and Preetha, 2012). Jakarta Declaration was notable as it was the initial convention held in Asia and this conference was the earliest to encourage private sector participation in this advocacy. With reflection and evaluation of the previous endeavors, Jakarta Declaration came up with the following priorities: 1) to uphold social accountability for health; 2) raise health investments; 3) establish partnerships for this advocacy; 4) Improve capacity building and empower individuals through education, leadership training and access to resources; and 5) build health promotion infrastructure (WHO, 2009).
Determinants of Health
Health promotion aims to address different determinants of health. These determinants are various domains that can hugely influence overall health and wellbeing such as social, economic, political, personal, biological, environmental and health services factors. As these are beyond the borders of the conventional curative method, it is vital to pursue holistic approach that would involve these sectors such as health promotion strategies (Kumar and Preetha, 2012).
For instance, lifestyle and social environment today favors people to have sedentary behaviors such as screen-based hobbies and consumption of ready-to-eat goods. According to many studies, these factors are directly associated with the increasing number of non-communicable diseases worldwide such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes mellitus.
Another example is the tobacco and alcohol regulation in different countries around the world. Different laws have been implemented on increasing its “sin taxes,” in an effort to reduce its health risks and to increase the budget for health promotion.
A third example would be the promotion of sustainable environment. With sustainable resources and safe env...