The Nola Pender Health Promotion Model and Theory - Essay Example

The Health Promotion Model (HPM) is a universal health promotion model developed by Dr. Nola Pender to help target groups achieve higher health standards. Effectively, the model focuses on ways of pursuing quality health standards through both preventive and curative measures. The theory behind the model outlines the role of personal experiences in the nature of future actions. That is, future actions are posited to be a factor of past experiences. The theory around the HPM focuses upon three major concepts; the experiences of the individual, knowledge of behavior-specific aspects and resultant affect, and the behavioral outcomes emerging from the two earlier fields. Several factors are associated with the HPM, namely; lifestyle, psychological status, socio-cultural traits, general outlook, and biological factors. The relationships between variables are outlined in the figure below.

Figure 1. The inter-variable relationships within the Nola Pender's HPM.

The HPM is based on an input-outcome structure – one that is mainly dependent on the inputs by the individual to determine the expected outcomes. This type of structure makes it easy to track the impacts of an intervention on the overall health of a group since the levels of input can be matched to corresponding output levels. The assumptions for the model are:

• Individuals attempt to take charge of their behaviors
• Individuals’ attempt to make improvements on themselves and their surroundings
• Experts on health matters – including doctors and nurses – form the interpersonal environment, and this environment also influences the behaviors of the individual
• Change of individual and environmental components has a significant influence on behavior change (Ricketts, 2014).

These assumptions are based on philosophical values of the individual. HPM can be generalized to different studies, including the present case of lack of important perinatal care and accompanying education in correctional facilities.