Health promotion aims to reach optimal health through activities that increase well-being, prevent disease, and control existing disease. It involves empowering communities, policymakers, professionals, and the public to support health-promoting policies, systems, and behaviors. Approaches to health promotion include creating healthy populations by addressing needs across life stages, promoting healthy lifestyles, and developing healthy environments. Challenges to health promotion in developing countries include poverty, economic priorities focused on growth over health, low education levels, political instability, and influence of commercial interests.

1. Health Promotion

2. HEALTH PROMOTION
It is the science aiming at reaching optimal (perfect)
health
All activities aiming at increasing well-being, prevention
of disease and health hazards,
or control of disease are included under health
promotion. (it is the highest aim of CM)
Health promotion is to add ‘life into the years’ and
not just add ‘years onto life’

3. Is a process of activating communities,
policy makers, professionals and the
public in favor of health supportive
policies, systems and ways of living.
It is carried out through acts of advocacy,
empowerment of people and building
social support systems that enable people
to make healthy choices and live healthy
lives.

4. Factors can favor health or
can harm it:
- Health promotion aims at making these conditions
favorable for health.
 Political conditions
 Economic conditions
 Social conditions
 Cultural conditions
 Environmental factors or conditions
 Behavioral factors or conditions
 Biological factors or conditions

5. Approaches for health promotion
How can we promote health?
■ Healthy population (infrastructure)
■ Healthy lifestyle
■ Healthy environment

6. Healthy populations- 1
By targeting all life stages and groups.
Since the health needs of people vary
according to their stage in the life cycle or
their gender, the healthy population
approach encourages initiatives that focus
on the health needs and contributions of
people at every life stage.

7. HEALTHY LIFESTYLES -2
• This approach focuses more on the behavior of individuals and
how their decisions and actions can lead to healthieroutcomes.
This can be done through health education, social mobilization
and advocacy programs.
• No smoking, better nutrition and exercise are examples of
healthy lifestyles approach.

8. Healthy enviroment
Creating social, economic and
environmental conditions that are
favorable to good health. Health conditions
in developing countries must be viewed in
a wider socio economic context because
millions of people are trapped in the
vicious cycle of poverty, despair, disparity,
illiteracy and diseas

9. Other approach for health
promotion
Prevention
.Immuniz
Environment
H.Services
Protection
Laws&policy
Health education
Appreciate health
Keen to keep healthy

10. Who promote health?
Individual role
Legislation
Environmental health
Health services
Other ministries
Policy & budget
H.Conciousness
Life style
Genetic
Beliefs
Occupation
Governmental role

11. WHO PROMOTES
?HEALTH
■ International organization
■ Health authorities
■ Non-Governmental Organizations
■ Primary health care team
■ Private physician.
■ Other health professions: nurses,
professions allied to medicine.
■ Religious organizations

13. health should be on the policy agenda in all
sectors, and at all levels of government.
Governments are ultimately accountable to their
people for the health consequences of their
policies, or the lack of policies. A commitment to
healthy public policies means that governments
must measure and report on their investments
for health, and the subsequent health outcomes
of these investments and policies in a language
that all groups in society readily understand.
Develop healthy public policy-1

14. Create supportive -2
environment
(1) Protection and conservation of the
natural environment - as a natural
resource - must be addressed in
any health promotion strategy.
(2)We must create a healthy working
& living conditions and making
them safe, stimulating for health,
satisfying & enjoyable.

15. (3)Systematic assessment of the
health impact of any rapidly
changing environment as in Work
places, energy productionareas
and rapidly urbanized areas.
(4)Encourage research studies for
detection of environmental hazards
on health and methods of
controlling them.

16. Strengthen community-3
action
■ Health promotion depends on concrete &
effective community action.
The community has to share in:
 Setting priorities
 Making decisions
 Planning strategies
 Implementing these strategies

17. This can be enhanced by:
Empowering the community
Create ownership
Control of their actions & efforts
This requires:
 Continuous access to information.
 Learning opportunities for health.
 Funding support.

18. Health promotion strategies -4
directed towards individuals
1. Increase individual awareness of disease and
disability prevention actions.
2. Changing lifestyles to healthy ones
3. Encourage individuals to have check-ups and
to use health screening opportunities.
4.Early seeking for medical advice
5.Compliance to physician
instruction and treatment schedule

19. Reorient health services-5
Health promotion requires reorientation of health
systems from tertiary (curative strategies) to
primary and secondary prevention models. This
reorientation is often be resisted by doctors, and
pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, those
who adopt ‘find it and fix it’ approach.
Encourage health service providers to build
opportunities for health education settings in
primary and secondary prevention of disease
and disability when delivering services.

20. Problems facing health promotion
in developing countries
■ Poverty and consequently the poor living
conditions (e.g. poor nutrition, poor housing,
environmental degradation) associated with it
are major obstacle for improving health of
people in developing countries. Unless
fundamental changes are made to this wider
context it will be difficult to make major advances
in health promotion. The challenge of reducing
poverty cannot be underestimated.

21. Economic priorities
Most developing countries have limited resources and many
competing demands for these resources. They are seeking to
achieve rapid economic gains and development by
industrialization and food production that gives priority to
foreign markets for earning foreign exchange.
Insufficient attention is given to the needs of local citizens leading
to low wages and poverty, poor nutrition and worse
environmental condition, all of which have serious health
consequences. International donors tend to encourage
activities that promote economic development and have quick
and visible outcomes.
The challenge for health promotion is to convince policy-
makers that good health is an economic asset rather than a
cost and it is an essential component of social and economic
empowerment

22. ■Education
Low levels of literacy specially health literacy
provide another challenge for the health
promotion approach. This can be an obvious
problem when trying to promote better health
behavior among people. Poor levels of
knowledge is an important factor that contribute
to almost all diseases. Efforts done to improve
illiteracy actually share in health promotion

23. Political stability
Where there is political instability,
internal conflict and war, it is extremely
difficult to develop health-promoting
environments. Not only are the economic
resources and priorities of governments
directed elsewhere, but also the regulatory
environment to create health supportive
settings is lacking.

24. Commercial interests
Marketing does not necessarily consider
health of citizens of developing countries
uppermost in their priorities. This is often
result in poor health outcomes. For example
marketing tobacco, and western food products.
Commercial propaganda of unhealthy products and
lifestyles make it difficult for healthy choices to be the
easiest or the attractive choices.
Regulation of the activities of these commercial interests is
required through political rules to introduce sufficient
levels of regulation as the taxes gained from unhealthy
products and used as an important source of
governmental funds. Poor governments can find it
difficult to resist this source of revenue.