Your task is to ask 3 different people have they heard of the term health promotion and if they have what do they think.
- “Health Promotion for me is like empowering people for better health. Also, as a Nurse, we can make use of our profession and skills as a tool for people or for those people we work with, to enable them, to promote change for the betterment of their health. It is like using salad master cookwares for our healthy lifestyle cooking.” (Female, 30’s, Staff Nurse).
- “Health Promotion is enabling others to take ownership of their health, wellness and being, by providing the resources required through education, information, dissemination and supervision.” My answers in my own words. (Female, 40’s, Clinical Nurse Manager).
- “As a social care worker health and wellness promotion is quite common term and is an important aspect used in the human health service both medical and social care settings to encourage healthy living. Health promotion to me means to encourage, to enable, to campaign, to advertise, to influence, to advocate or to put forward new and or better ways to health and wellness of the general population. It also means to increase people’s awareness and knowledge of the health and wellness being promoted.
Work involved in health promotion
In my understanding health and wellness promotion work involves prevention by giving lots of information about something being promoted. The aim is to create awareness to lessen or control if not prevented the impact of a disease to our body. An example to this promotion is the COVID 19 safety promotions of hygiene etiquette – hand washing, use of hand sanitizer, use of PPE, cleaning/disinfecting surfaces and how to sneeze and cough in public. The main aim of these promotions is simply to give lots of information about the prevention of COVID 19 virus that causes the recent pandemic crisis. It is crucial that public are well informed so to make them aware of the spread of this deadly virus for the safety of all. Other examples of preventive promotion are healthy eating and exercise for obesity reduction, cancer awareness, suicide awareness and many more to mention.
Another work involved in the health and wellness promotion is to restore or rehabilitative. This may be following recovery from an illness such as cancer, stroke, or other debilitating illnesses. It could mean a campaign drive to a cancer research and other debilitating illnesses known to humans to improve treatments in the future. It may also be about quitting from drug and alcohol abuse, smoking cessation, or mental health awareness. The aim is to give plenty of information or helpline to use for the knowledge of the people involved.
The health and wellness promotion maybe initiated by anyone but mainly it is the government’s initiative or empower people to kick start a drive to enable people to follow its lead. There are also lots of non-governmental organisations involve in these campaigns. The main idea is to enable people to live a healthier lifestyle away from ill health”. (Female, 40’s, social care worker).