Health Promotion: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Health promotion is a vital component of public health practice. During last two decades, health promotion has been consolidated and institutionalized. Public health practitioners, policy-makers, academicians and researchers recognize the role of health promotion in improving public health. Many professional associations and scholarly journals are working in the area of health promotion [1]. In 2009, health promotion was re-defined as, " Health Promotion is the art and science of helping people discover the synergies between their core passions and optimal health, enhancing their motivation to strive for optimal health, and supporting them in changing their lifestyle to move toward a state of optimal health. Optimal health is a dynamic balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle change can be facilitated through a combination of learning experiences that enhance awareness, increase motivation, and build skills and, most important, through the creation of opportunities that open access to environments that make positive health practices the easiest choice " [2]. Factors Influencing Health Promotion There are various factors which influence health promotion activities and must be kept in mind while developing health promotion programs. These factors include culture, religion, age, gender, literacy and access to modern technology. The concept of health and illness changes over time and varies according to the cultural, religious and spiritual perceptions of the community [3]. Many cultures have different roles and responsibilities, assigned to men and women. In some cultures the role of woman is of a primary care taker for the rest of the family. To fulfill this role, she is expected to sacrifice some of her personal preferences. The influence of age and gender on the concepts of health and illness can be highlighted by the excerpt from a qualitative study conducted amongst Russian immigrant women, to determine their perceptions regarding breast cancer screening. The response of a 74-year lady was, " What good would it make if I started rushing between medical offices for this and that? They would surely find some disease. Nobody of my age is totally healthy. But it is a waste of time, you cannot live forever. The time that I still have to live, I want to give to my grand children, not to myself [4]. Literacy, in general and health literacy in particular influence the concepts of health and illness. Because of increasingly complex and technologically sophisticated modern health care system, health literacy problems are also magnified [5]. Recent advances in technology especially the advent of internet has contributed to the merging of cultural perspectives and emergence of new ideas of health and illness, resulting from a combination of pre-existing and new concepts [3].