Health Promotion Practice - Essay Example

Lasting progress in helping populations to adopt and maintain healthy behaviors is probably best achieved at the community level through the coordinated efforts of multiple institutions and programs that reach citizens where they live, work, play, and study" Woolf, Dekker, Rothenberg Byrne, and Miller, 2011:S45). Critically discuss the implications of this assertion in relation to Health Promotion Practice. Name Institution Tutor Date Lasting progress in helping populations to adopt and maintain healthy behaviors is probably best achieved at the community level through the coordinated efforts of multiple institutions and programs that reach citizens where they live, work, play, and study" Woolf, Dekker, Rothenberg Byrne , And Miller, 2011:s45). Critically discuss the implications of this assertion in relation to health promotion practice Introduction Health can be defined is a condition of complete mental, physical, and social health and not just lack of illness and disability (The World Health Report, 2000). It is the process of empowering people in the society to strengthen their well-being and its determining factor is known as health promotion (Bunton and Macdonald, 2002). Families improve their health through health promotion. People are also able to increase their quality of well-being, attain and preserve the same through health promotion (Wise and Signal, 2000). The process not only promotes individual well-being but also promotes a positive, healthy community. Scriven and Garman (2007) define health promotion as a positive assumption emphasizing on individual, social, constitutional and organized resources, as well as objective capacities. Chenoweth (2007) added that health promotion involves, training, political, spiritual, economic, or governmental initiative developed to bring positive behavioral, attitudinal, social, or environmental change towards improving the society well-being. This promotion is directed towards combating the negative effects of well-being. Therefore, health promotion requires a careful co-operation of areas more than health service industries, revealing the variety of circumstances, which affect health (Pender, Murdaugh and Parsons, 2006). This essay will critically explore and discuss the implications of community development in relation to Health Promotion Practice. The concept of health promotion In the Ireland society, health promotion is described as a discipline and the ability of assisting people transform their way of living and improve their life style (Ryan, McNamara and Deasy, 2006). Improved health is described as a balance of emotional, physical, spiritual, social, and rational health. Changes in standard of living can change because of a combination of struggles to improve health awareness, transform behavior, and develop situations that encourage good medical practices that promote societal well-being (Ryan, McNamara and Deasy, 2006). Health promotion includes promotion of healthy life styles and getting the society to get involved in health promotion activities (ODonnell, 2002). Health promotion unit in Ireland was developed in 1988, and it was in charge of making policies concerning alcohol abuse (Ryan, McNamara and Deasy, 2006). It aimed at providing support forces to develop awareness of the clear impact healthful way of life. They take part in identifying measures that can be implemented to make members of the society to it accept healthy way of life. In Ireland, community development has been reestablished and is currently represented as having the ability to play an important role in well-being intervention strategies. Community development was used because through social intervention, different people within the community would get educated (Ryan, McNamara and Deasy, 2006). In this area, health promotion aims at strengthening community action within the society (Ryan, McNamara and Deasy, 2006). Community action is important because the unit aims at making community members take control of their individual well-being (Woolf et al. 2011). Community development has mainly been achieved through community development, which acts as the heart of training to improve individual assistance and social maintenance and to develop adaptable systems for supporting the community into participation and promoting positive health issues. According to McKenna, Barry and Friel (2004), health promotion helps individual and community development by availing educational information about health and improves community life skills. It means that by doing this, the community increases the possibilities of making community members handle their own health, as well as their immediate environment. Through community development, members of the community are in a position to learn, and exercise more control over their health and environment (Woolf et al. 2011). People are able to make suitable decisions concerning their well-being. This learning has to be conducted at home in schools and even places of worship. It is the role of the community, the government, and medical professionals to take part in health promotion in Ireland (Ryan, McNamara and Deasy, 2006). All these individuals work simultaneously towards improving the community well-being and promote a healthy society. Reorienting healthy community services also needs stronger devotion to medical investigation as well as adjustments in professional training and education (Woolf et al. 2011). The training offered to the community must contribute to individual change in attitude and medical services, which relocates overall needs of the individual as a complete individual. Health promotion includes medical care services offered by a professional organization and individual responsibility to control their well-being (McQueen and Kickbusch, 2007). Professional organizations are used because health is viewed as a resource for ordinary being, not the objective of surviving. Well-being is an affirmative concept highlighting social and individual resources, in addition to physical abilities. Therefore, this promotion looks at individual responsibility in their well-being. Health promotion includes development of individual skills concerning individual well-being (Scriven and Garman, 2007). Through it, different organizations within the Ireland community provide different programs and actions presented to the youths, including education concerning individual wellbeing and information on medical issues affecting people. Community development in this case aims at influencing personal development mainly on individual skills such as, individual self-efficacy, self-esteem, communication, cooperation, life skills, and inspiration. This is founded on the verity that personal development has a major influence on health. Through the unit, the organizations aim at developing supportive community encouragements (Naidoo and Wills, 2000). This means that through designing safe and protected social and physical environments, the developed organizations provide the young people and other society members with chances to examine and discover medical issues. Individuals are encouraged to practice positive behaviors; thus, providing information on physical education and coming up with positive choices concerning individual well-being (Woolf et al. 2011). For instance, promoting proper feeding programs within the society, advocating for drug free environment and promoting health promotion services within the community, this in turn promotes positive well-being. The government uses the community to strengthen community action towards ill health (Tones and Tilford, 2001; Tones and Green, 2004). Community action is usually achieved through the government forming partnership with other communities developed organizations to form capacity and influence youths’ well-being within the community as well as continue to support community well-being. For instance, presenting parental programs to educate members of the community of medical initiatives that can be used to promote their welfare, which in turn, builds capacity and positively influences the entire community. Therefore, this boosted sense of concern and control of personal health by community members. Through the expansion of health associated policy within the community, youth associations display evidence-based procedure representing the significance of developing medically related policy to support system (Edelman and Mandle, 2006). A good example is the sexual policy and the drug abuse policy.  Furthermore, youth associations have a major role in promoting awareness and supporting for the development of community policy and transformation in order to help their health related work and the well-being of the community, for instance, a policy developed to educate the youths on drug abuse (Woolf et al. 2011). Therefore, through empowerment of people through increased information, awareness and the expansion of different skills through research in labs makes the community members responsible for their health. Professional organizations provide information and medical services that promote the community well-being (Bunton and Macdonald, 2002). Community well-being is achieved by encouraging the expansion and establishment of medical services that respond to the medical needs of people. This is an important responsibility of youth associations, for example, youth associations promote awareness and motivate the establishment of a teenager approachable medical service for youth. The ethos of health promotion Ethos are ethical behaviors necessary in health promotion, however, the definition of ethos tends to be very intricate because the caregivers must consider the patients individual needs. In regard to the society, professional health providers must consider the medical needs of the community (The World Health Report, 2000). On the other hand, medical professionals need to consider the needs of both the specific patients and the community, which includes the employee, the workforce and the community at large (Green, 2000). Occasionally, these several obligations lead to several conflicting issues concerning ethos of health promotion. In most communities, workers have the right to be protected from workstation hazards, and the effort of professional medical programs should be developed to tackle this priority. Ethical questions related to the workers protection programs from hazardous conditions are normally those connected the organizations financial interests to protect their workers from ill health (Tones and Green, 2004). Therefore, professional health should always work at promoting the health of their workers within the organization. Professional health programs within an organization usually experience challenges when putting ethical issues into consideration in health promotion. At times, they are usually asked to act as advocates for their workers when illegal issues appear or when the worker, or the expert, feels that the protection procedures are not provided by the organization (Pender, Murdaugh and Parsons, 2006). To reduce these conflicting issues, it is important to develop community expectations, societal incentives, and infrastructural devices to work against the company’s real or professed financial drawbacks in providing health promotion programs among their workers. These strategies usually consist of well-defined regulations that need reliable practices, with expensive penalties for violation of developed standards. In turn, this requires sufficient agreement and enforcement structure (Pender, Murdaugh and Parsons, 2006). The strategies may also consist of employee compensation bonuses intended to encourage prevention exercises. It is only when community factors, rules, beliefs and legal code reflect the significance of work health promotion will decent system of health promotion be fully implemented. Occasionally, when a worker realizes that the environment they work is dangerous to their health it may lead to a conflicting ethical issue (Pender, Murdaugh and Parsons, 2006). In such a circumstance, the rights of the employee and the public must always be considered when considering health promotion of workers. Therefore, before one is employed he or she must be fit to work in terms of profession ability and not physical well-being. It is also unlawful to deny an individual a chance to get employed because of illness, unless there is enough scientific fact to prove this condition. However, there are other medical decisions that suggest that an employee may be a hazard to other workers and these needs to be considered by the organization in charge of the worker. Ethical issues in health promotion involve applying a critical investigation on established policies of a given program and not individual and societal needs. Most of the ethical issues arise when social norms are infringed (Jochelson, 2005). For instance, infringement of smokers well-being and the right to respect those who do not smoke is not right. The relevance of health promoting activity Programs developed to promote health issues within the society are useful because they can be used to improve the community well-being and reduce ill health among different people within the community (Green, 2000). However, not all health programs and interventions are important and successful in health promotion. Objectives that prosper are those constructed on clear guidelines and look at medically related challenges within the society (Green, 2000). Theories of health promotion can be used when planning, assessing and implementing health intervention used in health promotion within the society. Planners use health promotion theories to respond to issues that affect the community well-being (Green, 2000). As a result, professionals can use theories to assess why people are not considering medical services offered to them. The theories can be used to identify the needs of the community before establishing an organization. They also help health professionals identify suitable strategies to use when promoting health among people of different categories, and to make an impact of the community. Apart from this, the models can be used to explain the different behaviors observed among community members when promoting health incentives. Theory and models used in health promotion provide the foundation for assessing whether all the basic program elements are in place when providing health promotion programs (Green, 2000; DiClemente, Crosby and Kegler, 2002). For instance, a program developed to promote a specific behavior, like use of condoms, cannot prosper unless it is taken to the identified target group. Offering the youths with information concerning the use of condoms will not have enough effect when they do not know how to obtain the condoms and how to use them. Consequently, theories can make the main influence to improving the programs and exploiting possible effects. Health promotion theories include theories that display the problem and assist to recognize the different factors that can be improved by those promoting health within the society. This theory is known as an explanatory theory because it tends to explain the issues that affect people within the community (Green, 2000). Thus, the change theory, on the other hand, aims at advocating for change within the community by providing alternative strategies and interventions that can promote health. Most of the medical related challenges emanate from environmental, social and economic factors many programs and projects concentrate on the transformation of attitudes at the system or community level (Green, 2000). Hence, there is an emphasis on societal or community development to take part in health promotion at community level. Through community development, important theories can be drawn from the community to advocate for change (Woolf et al. 2011). In order to understand the community, health promoters need to understand motivation strategies and capacity building to respond to all issues affecting individual health. Therefore, health promotion mainly works through motivation and capacity building among people at the community level. In conclusion, positive health within a community leads to proper economic, environmental, and social development. In order to help people, health promotion should be based at the community level through the coordinated efforts of multiple institutions and programs that reach community members where they dwell, places of work, places of entertainment, and even places of study. References Bunton, R. and Macdonald, G. (2002). Health promotion: disciplines, diversity, and developments (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Chenoweth, D., H. (2007). Worksite health promotion (2nd ed.). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics. DiClemente, R, J., Crosby, R, A., and Kegler, M., C. (2002). Emerging theories in health promotion practice and research: strategies for improving public health. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Edelman, C, L., and Mandle, C., L. (2006). Health promotion throughout the life span (6th ed.). St. Louis MO: Mosby Elsevier. Green, J. (2000). 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