Health Promotion and Protection
Health Promotion and Protection is an activity in health and social fields, engaging the people of a community in assessing their perceived problems, needs and aspirations and their shared positions for dealing with them. Health promotion involves the population as a whole in the context of their everyday life rather than focusing on people at risk for specific diseases. It, therefore, is not a medical service, but an action directed toward the determinants or causes of health, action that combines diverse but complementary methods or approaches, including communication, education, legislation, fiscal measures, organizational change, community development and spontaneous local activities against health hazards. The goal of health promotion is to reach and achieve healthful living patterns and conditions that last.
Health promotion, as an activity engaging the people, means the latter must be empowered to act for their health and wellbeing. To achieve empowerment, communities often need encouragement to control their own education, assess their own needs, set their own priorities, develop their own self-help programs, and, if necessary, challenge the power structure to provide resources.
