Exploring Health Promotion: Strategies, Effectiveness, and Approaches (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: This video looks at health promotion approaches and strategies. The syllabus states that you need to learn about lifestyle and behavioural approaches, preventative medical approaches and public health approaches. You also need to learn to determine the effectiveness of a range of health promotion strategies relevant to young people, and propose other actions that may improve the health of young people. Lifestyle behavioural approaches seek to educate the individual so that they can change their lifestyle or a particular behaviour to help improve their health. This may be to stop partaking in a risk behaviour or to start enjoying some protective behaviours. Either way, the aim is to change the person's lifestyle or behaviour. Preventative medical approaches are approaches that involve drugs and technology to help to prevent health issues. These include health check-ups, vaccinations and cancer screening programs. Public health approaches seek to promote health based on the knowledge that health has a range of determinants, but particularly target the social determinants of health as set out by the World Health Organisation and the Ottawa Charter. Two such examples of public health approaches to health promotion are health promoting schools and workplaces. Your syllabus requires you to critique specific health promotion strategies to determine their effectiveness in promoting health. To do this, you need to consider questions such as does data show improvements in health since the implementation of specific health promotions? For example, smoking rates have dropped dramatically since particular interventions have occurred. What else could explain the increase or decrease in health statistics? For example, improved sanitation and the end of wars reduce diseases dramatically. And why would this approach work? Does theory strengthen the case for the promotion to have worked? For example, mandatory health education at schools should empower you to make healthier decisions because you know the benefits and risks associated with the behaviour.