What is HP
Defining health promotion
The Health Promotion Forum has been striving to encapsulate the discipline of health promotion in a few words. This is a challenge that has vexed the profession since it first emerged several decades ago. It is widely acknowledged that we need a clear definition of health promotion to effectively communicate its purpose and value to others. Below is our definition, which we invite health promoters around the country – and the world – to adopt.
Health promotion is both a discipline and a process. It focuses on empowering people and communities to take control of their health and wellbeing. Ranging from action at a community level to developing policies, it is founded on the principle that health and wellbeing begins in the settings of everyday life.
Health Promotion Forum of New Zealand
Runanga Whakapiki Ake i te Hauora o Aotearoa
April 2014 |
- There are three perspectives on health promotion relevant to the Aotearoa New Zealand setting.
- Health promotion is a unique discipline and is distinct from public health and health education.
- Health promotion is one of the disciplines that together work towards optimising population health.
- From a Western perspective, health promotion is a public health discipline. It is the process of enabling peoples and communities to take greater control of their health[ii].
- From a Māori view point, health promotion is the enabling of Māori to take greater control of the determinants of their health and therefore their future[iii].
- From a Pasifika perspective, health promotion is the empowering of Pasifika peoples to control their wellbeing and their future[iv].