Health and Socail Care - Health Promotion

Health Promotion Key Concepts

A health promotion is a range of stratergies used to help improve and maintian a persons helath and wellbeing.

Health is difficult to define, but most people refer to health as being fit and healthy. no poo sherlock!

There are three different ways of looking at health. There is the negative view, the positive view and the holistic view.

Negative Health

Neagtive health is the absence of illness. The logic comes into this view and it it sadi that you are in good health if you are free from illness and disease.

There are many ways of promoting health and theer are many people who promote this health.

Examples of people who promote health are:

• The government
• Patients
• Schools
• Doctos
• Public Transport
• Celebrities
• Businesses

Biomedical Approach

The Biomedcal Approach takes medical action to impove peoples health. This is carried out usually by doctors or other medical professionals. It is also done with full consnt of the patient. It may also be supported by the law.

Examples of these kinds of promotions are:

• Immunising
• Check-ups
• Tablets and medication
• Health Visitors
• Free contraceptives
• Operations

Advantages of the approach

• It can prevent the illnesses that may be a big problem and prevention is better than cure,(when you cure it it could come back, preventing it stops it from coming all together)
• The medication and tests work on most people and so there is not a problem with treating people
• The campaign can reach nealry everyone and so there will not be alot of sudden breakout of certain diseases.
• Many people like and are happ to take medical tests and medcine to improve their health
• The general public believe in what a doctor tells them and so they will be treated for any illnesses that they might have.

Disadvanatges of the approach

• Some people are afraid of the treatments that they ave to have to be cured (i.e. injections)
• People may not understand why they need the treatment of medication
• Transport causes a major problem, actually getting to the treatment
• The solution may just be a quick fix and may not help for a long term basis
• People may not simply know that there are treatments available for them to have

There are many aims of the helath promotions in todays society.

Examples of these aims are as follows:

• To immunis people against perventable diseases
• To makpeople understand the causes of illness
• To promote safe intercourse and prevent the spead of intercourseal (srry wont let e write the word sex lol) transmitd diseases and unwanted pregnancies
• to inform people about medical advances and available treatments
• to better treat existing health problems that people may have

 There are three different approaches to health promotion and these are:

The Biomedical Approach

The Societal Change Approach

The Educational/Behavioural Approach

Positive health

This type of helath focus' on the presence of certain qualities or abilities. When you are positivley healthy you are sadi to be fit, happy and having healthy blood pressure and heart rate.

The holistic approach

This is when not only the health side of things are considered but the factors around you are considered aswell. for example the environment you live in and the things you do will be considered as well as the illnesses that you have got. It is usually defined as the following:

"being in a state of complete physical, emotional and social wellbeing, not merely the anscence of disease or infirmity."

This approach looks at the 'whole person.'

This is a way of improving the health and wellbeing of individuals by using the Law and Policies.

Examples of the types of promotion that you can get are:

raising the age of consent

anti smoking laws

legalising / criminalising drugs

compulsory healthy school dinners

Only the government can change the law, but because they are not a health professionals they have to fin their information form somewhere else. someimes, these laws come as a result of research and the public opinion

There are many advantages of this approach:

• it is very difficult to miss any changes that there are in the law, bacause it is usually well promoted
• the stratergis can be enforced by the law, where as the other two stratergies cannot be
• people are more likley to listen when the promotion becomes part of the law, bacuse they will then realise the seriousness of the problem
• people will be scared of the punishment if they do not abide ans do they will abide
• if something is made illegal then it will also be seen as morally wrong and so people are more likley to listen.

There are however alot of disadvantages to this approahc that can cause problems:

• People might rebel and think that it is cool to break the law
• It often takes wuite a few years for the law to become fully effective
• it may be a very difficult task to enforce the laws
• there are also many currnent laws that are being broken and so the laws that are created may not work
• some people may find the laws too harsh and not follow them

This is the approach that explains things to people so that they understand why it is dangerous etc... to do certain things

it helps them undertsnad more fully what the problems are. the idea is that this will in turn change peoples behaviours.

Examples of ways the country does this are:

• School talks
• Support groups
• books
• leaflets
• care worker visits
• tv adverts
• websites
• magezines
• posters
• phone lines/help lines

There are three different focuses in this approach to promoting health:

• The Information focus
• The Activity focus
• The Medical Focus

The Informational Focus:

This is the focus that increases the awareness of health issues simply by giving information to people and the advice that the experts give to help them with these issues, i.e. the effects that smoking can have on you and the people around you, what foods are healthy and unhealthy and how much excercise is reccommended each weeki in order to stay fit and healthy

The Activity Focus:

This is the focus that provides people with methods they can use to improve their health, i.e. ways to incorporate excercise into your day and stratergies for giving up smoking or how to cut down on alcohol

The Medical Focus:

Makes people aware of medical practices and procedures that can treat them or prevent them from being ill. For example, these would be telling people about immunisations and telling them about breast screenings etc...

A biomedical campaign wil often be coupoled with an educational campaign with a medical focus in order to let people know about the biomedical campaigns that there are in offer.

Watch out! A campaign which gives the treatment to people (immunisation) is a biomedcial campaign. But a campaign that tells people they should be immunised ot take some tablets is an educational / behavioural campaign.

There are many 8advantages of this approach. these inlcude the following things:

• it gives people the information that is needed and then they can make an informed desicion for themself as to what they are going to do
• it can be used to traget specific groups of people i.e. smoker or people with obesity
• pester power works, this is when the children in the family can keep bugging their parents to get them a bike so they can excercies more etc... etc...
• its good for people to inderstand mmore about illnesses
• if engough people are educated then it can become common sense
• people may not have known the information that you have given them in the first placeand so it will help them with the realisation of what is actually happening etc...
• there are many different statergies which means that one can be found to suit different people, meaning that the care they are given can be more personalized
• lots of people watch tv, go on the internet and read magezines so there is not a very high chance that alot of people would miss out on finding out the information that is nedeed for them to be healthier etc... ect..

There are also however many things that can be wrong with this approach and these can include:

• The TV adverts will not reach people that do not watch the 'right channels' , read books, go out of not watch TV at all
• very young people will be too young to understand the campaign
• people may feel like they are being preached or dictated to "you must do this" and so they will not do what the advert etc... has told them that they need to do
• people may already know about the consequences etc... on the health issue and they may simply not care
• Billboards and posters may just be ignored and not even looked at at all
• A leaflet can be looked at without even being read

An example of a way that you cvan add the two approaches together could be:

Biomedical: free checkups for the illness or health problem

Educational: A tv advert or leaflet stating the risks of the condition

Societal: a policy which states that certain things are now illegal or compulsory for certain groups of people to follow

Thank You and I hope this is very helpful for you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   :)