Key
Strategies
Since the
Ottawa Charter, health promoters have worked on these five action
areas through the use of multiple, complementary strategies.
Some
key strategies include:
Health
Communication – the use of communication techniques and
technologies to positively influence individuals, populations
and organizations for the purposes of promoting conditions conducive
to human and environmental health.
Health
Education – consciously constructed opportunities for
learning involving some form of communication designed to improve
health literacy, including improving knowledge and developing
life skills which are conducive to individual and community health.
Self-Help/Mutual
Aid – a process by which people who share common experiences,
situations or problems can offer each other support.
Organizational
change – working within settings for health, such as
schools, worksites, businesses, universities, hospitals and recreational
facilities, to create supportive environments that better enable
people to make healthy choices.
Community
Development and Mobilization – collective efforts by
communities which are directed towards increasing community
control over the determinants of health, thereby improving
health.
Advocacy
– a combination of individual and social actions designed
to gain political commitment or support for a particular
health goal or program (Nutbeam, 1998).
Policy
Development - the process of developing legislative and
regulatory measures that
protect the health of communities and make it easier for individuals
to make healthy choices.
Research
indicates that health promotion programs using multiple strategies
are more effective. When considering the application of these
strategies to address health issues, it’s important to
bear in mind that they should be viewed as complementary rather
than ‘stand-alone’ approaches to change.
