Speaker 1: We're going to have a look at health promotion, a very important part of public health and an essential component in any public health program. We'll talk about what it is and have a look at the Ottawa Charter which outlines some of the important principles of health promotion. So what is health promotion? Health promotion is defined as the process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health. In essence, health promotion is about improving health. But what is health? Well, the World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being rather than a mere absence of disease or infirmary. Good health is not determined by a single factor. A variety of factors such as social, environmental and economic conditions have an impact on health. These factors not only impact health but can also make it easier or more difficult for people to make changes to their health. Because of this, health promotion tries to improve health not only by targeting people at an individual level to change their behavior but by taking a comprehensive approach addressing a broad spectrum of health factors and determinants. Over time, the importance of health promotion has received global attention. In 1986, the first International Conference of Health Promotion was organized by the World Health Organization. It was held in Ottawa, Canada and an outcome of this conference was the creation of a document called the Ottawa Charter. This was a landmark document and has been influential in providing guidance to the goals and concepts of health promotion. The principles set out in the Charter are still used in health promotion activities today. Since the meeting in Ottawa, there have been other international health promotion meetings which have expanded on other health promotion themes. Now let's take a closer look at the key components of the Ottawa Charter. The Ottawa Charter describes five action areas and three strategies to achieve health. Let's talk about the action areas first before we get into the strategies. The five action areas are building healthy public policy, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, developing personal skills and reorienting health services. Building healthy public policy is the process of developing policies that support health by not only protecting the health of individuals and communities, but also making it easier for people to make healthy choices. This is done by a coordinated approach of legislative, regulatory, organizational and taxation changes. Healthy policies are not made just by health departments, but from all levels and sectors of government and other organizations. A few examples of healthy public policies are laws requiring people to wear seatbelts and helmets, smoking restrictions and workplace health and safety regulations. Moving on to creating supportive environments. The environment that people live in, both the natural and built environment, are closely linked to their health. So this action area focuses on places that people live in, their communities, where they work, learn or play. It aims to increase the ability of people to make health-promoting choices while in those settings. Some examples of this are activities such as promoting health in the workplace, restrictions on junk food advertising for children, and strengthening links between environments and people like walking or running programs. The next action area is strengthening community action. This refers to the collective efforts of communities to improve their health. To give you some examples, community fun runs that promote people to be active, community kitchens that promote healthy eating, and community-based organizations that support people living with HIV-AIDS are all community efforts to improve health. The fourth action area is reorienting health services. Health systems have traditionally been medically dominated and have focused on an individual's curative and treatment needs. This action area aims to make health systems focus more on supporting the needs of people and communities for a healthy life. It takes into consideration the total needs of an individual and encourages health services to focus on strengthening protective factors, reducing risk factors, and improving on the social determinants of health. Let's look at some of the examples of reorienting health services. These include training doctors to assess and educate patients to stop smoking, establishing health educator roles within medical centers to coordinate preventative activities, and improving access to health services for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Lastly, developing personal skills focuses on supporting personal and social development. This is done by providing information, education, and enhancing life skills to make positive health choices. Examples of this are online programs that provide information on heart disease, distributing educational material on the effects of diabetes, and classes that teach people on how to manage disease. Now that we've covered the five action areas, let's talk about the three strategies that the Ottawa Charter identified for health promotion. These are to advocate, mediate, and enable. To advocate is to use a combination of individual and social actions to obtain political commitment, policy support, and social systems that support a health goal. To mediate is the process by which different interests of individuals and communities, and also different sectors like public and private sectors, are reconciled in ways that promote and protect health. To enable means that health promotion activities to improve health are taken in partnership with individuals so that they're empowered to take actions to protect and promote their health. And that's the overview of health promotion and the Ottawa Charter in a nutshell.