Concept about Health promotion – This book covers the entire syllabus of “Community Health Nursing” prescribed by the Universities of Bangladesh- for Basic and diploma nursing students. We tried to accommodate latest information and topics.
This book is examination friendly setup according to the teachers’ lectures and examination’s questions. At the end of the book previous university questions are given. We hope in touch with the book students’ knowledge will be upgraded and flourished. The unique way of presentation may make your reading of the book a pleasurable experience.
Concept about Health promotion
Concepts
Nurses’ contributions in community- oriented nursing focus on 4 main areas: health promotion, disease prevention and control, health maintenance, and health restoration. Health promotion includes all efforts that seek to move people closer to optimal well-being or higher level of wellness. Disease prevention and control involves all the measures designed to prevent or reduce as much as the possible the incidence, prevalence and consequences of disease. Health maintenance is the combination of promotion and prevention and health restoration is to help prevent complication and to ensure optimal recovery.
Promotion of health is recognized as one of the most important components of public health and community health practice. Health promotion includes all efforts that seek to move people closer to optimal well-being or higher level of wellness. Nursing in particularly has a social mandate engaging in health promotion.
Definition of health promotion
Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, of individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfied needs and to change or cope with the environment.
Or
Health Promotion can be defined as those activities related to individual life style and choices and designed to improve or maintain health. Goal of health promotion: The goal of health promotion is to raise of wellness for individuals’ families, population and communities.
Family health promotion has been defined as the process by which families work to improve or maintain the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the family unit and its members.
Goals of health promotion
Community health efforts accomplish the goal through three prolonged effort to –
1. Increase the span of healthy life for all citizens.
2. Reduce health disparities among population groups.
3. Achieve access to preventive services for everyone.
Multiple interventions and strategies required in health promotion
A population health approach calls for multiple and complementary interventions and strategies across different levels. Currently, resources and attention are heavily focused on one-to-one interventions within the health care system, aimed largely at the restoration of health. The challenge is to move beyond the individual to the family, community, and society. Strategies are broad approaches, and often are linked to specific agents of change and settings. Strategy examples include:
- policy development and coordination
- regulatory actions
- research
- community action
- capacity building
- partnerships
- education and public awareness
- Organizational and administrative reviews.
A successful mix of interventions and strategies will
1. Produce incremental and comprehensive change.
2. Address the broad determinants of health in complementary ways. latemorial
3. Reduce inequities.
4. Be comprehensive across the range of health actions.
5. Integrate across health outcomes.
6. Deal with the entire lifespan.
7. Work within multiple settings, such as the home, school, workplace and community
Interventions require a variety of skills and resources, including
- funding
- technical assistance
- organization
- management
- education
- communications
- leadership and promotion
- Political support
Health promotion evaluation and effectiveness
- Evaluation of health promotion, public health or public policy interventions
- Risk behaviour in health and the effect of interventions in influencing health-related behaviour in professionals, patients and the public
- Evaluation of preventative actions
- Including the evidence base for early interventions on children and families, support for social and economic development
- Understanding of pre-determinants of health including the effect of social cohesion on health outcomes.
Approaches/Intervention of health promotion
The well-known approaches/intervention of health promotion are –
1. Health education
2. Environmental modification
3. Nutritional intervention
4. Life style and behavioral changes.
Approaches/Intervention of health promotion
1. Health education: Tills is one of the most cost-effective interventions. A large number of diseases could be prevented with little or no medical intervention if people were adequately informed about them and if people were encouraged to take necessary precaution in time. The targets for educational efforts may include the general public, patients, priority groups, health Providers’ community leaders, & decision makers.
2. Environmental modification: Health promotion requires environmental modifications such as –
- Provision of safe water;
- Installation of sanitary latrines;
- Improvement of housing etc.
- Control of insects and rodents;
Environmental intervention are non-clinical and do not involve the physician.to
3. Nutrition Interventions: These comprise food distribution and nutrition improvement of vulnerable groups; child feeding programs food fortification, and nutrition education etc.
4. Lifestyle and Behavioral changes: The conventional public health measures or interventions have not been successful in making inroads into lifestyle reform. The action of prevention in this case, is one of individual and community responsibility for health. The physician and intact each health worker acting as an educator than a therapist.
5. Disease prevention and Control: Disease prevention means not only preventing the development of a disease but also in a broad sense, limiting the progression of disease at any stage. It is also important to help the clients identify risks for illness or injury so that they can make important decision to maintain or improve their health status by taking risk reduction action.
The basic approach in controlling disease is to identify the weak points and break the weakest links in the chain of transmissions. This requires sound epidemiological knowledge of the disease that is its magnitude, distribution in time, place, person, and multifactorial causation, sources of infection and dynamics of transmission.
Examples of effective health promotion activities for child and family health
- Promoting breastfeeding
- Promoting child and family nutrition
- SIDS prevention and education
- Injury prevention
- Promoting physical activity
- Smoking cessation programs such as ‘quit’ activities and ‘brief interventions’
- Promoting early literacy
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