Measuring health promotion: translating science into policy

Abstract

Commonly, it is the end of life when our health is deteriorating, that many will make drastic lifestyle changes to improve their quality of life. However, it is increasingly recognized that bringing good health-promoting behaviors into practice as early in life as possible has the most significant impact across the maximal healthspan. The WHO has brought clarity to health promotion over the last fifteen years, always centering on language relating to a process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their physical, mental and social health. A good healthspan is not just freedom from morbidity and mortality, it is that joie de vivre (“joy of living”) that should accompany every day of our lifespan. Therefore, health promotion includes not only the health sector, but also needs individual commitment to achieve that target of a healthspan aligned with the lifespan. This paper explores health promotion and health literacy, and how to design appropriate nutritional studies to characterize contributors to a positive health outcome, the role the human microbiome plays in promoting health and addressing and alleviating morbidity and diseases, and finally how to characterize phenotypic flexibility and a physiologic resilience that we must maintain as our structural and functional systems are bombarded with the insults and perturbations of life.