Health promotion and disease prevention programs focus on keeping people healthy. Health promotion programs aim to engage and empower individuals and communities to choose healthy behaviors, and make changes that reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases and other morbidities. Defined by the World Health Organization, health promotion:
“enables people to increase control over their own health. It covers a wide range of social and environmental interventions that are designed to benefit and protect individual people’s health and quality of life by addressing and preventing the root causes of ill health, not just focusing on treatment and cure.”
Disease prevention differs from health promotion because it focuses on specific efforts aimed at reducing the development and severity of chronic diseases and other morbidities.
Wellness is related to health promotion and disease prevention. Wellness is described as the attitudes and active decisions made by an individual that contribute to positive health behaviors and outcomes.
Health promotion and disease prevention programs often address social determinants of health, which influence modifiable risk behaviors. Social determinants of health are the economic, social, cultural, and political conditions in which people are born, grow, and live that affect health status. Modifiable risk behaviors include, for example, tobacco use, poor eating habits, and lack of physical activity, which contribute to the development of chronic disease.
Typical strategies for health promotion, disease prevention, and wellness programs include:
- Communication: Raising awareness about healthy behaviors for the general public. Examples of communication strategies include public service announcements, health fairs, mass media campaigns, and newsletters.
- Education: Empowering behavior change and actions through increased knowledge. Examples of health education strategies include courses, trainings, and support groups.
- Policy, Systems, and Environment: Making changes to conditions — through improved laws, rules, and regulations (policy), functional organizational components (systems), and economic, social, or physical environment — to encourage, make available, and enable healthy choices.
Health promotion and disease prevention program models are provided in Module 2.
Resources to Learn More
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Website
Provides information, statistics, tools, resources and grant funding related to health promotion and chronic disease prevention program planning.
Organization(s): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
National Prevention Strategy: America's Plan for Better Health and Wellness
Document
Provides information on the National Prevention Strategy — a comprehensive plan with evidence-based recommendations for building healthy and safe environments, expanding access to quality care, empowering people to make healthier choices, and eliminating health disparities.
Organization(s): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Date: 6/2011
FAQs
Health promotion and disease prevention programs focus on keeping people healthy. Health promotion programs aim to engage and empower individuals and communities to choose healthy behaviors, and make changes that reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases and other morbidities.
What are the four strategies used to promote health and prevent disease? ›
These preventive stages are primordial prevention, primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention. Combined, these strategies not only aim to prevent the onset of disease through risk reduction but also downstream complications of a manifested disease.
What is the health promotion disease prevention model? ›
Health promotion models are focused on exploring people's attitudes about health and individual experiences related to it. According to the theory, one would have to look at people's lifestyles, psychological health, and social and cultural environment to understand most of their health-related decisions.
What are the 5 principles of health promotion Ottawa Charter? ›
It incorporates five key action areas in Health Promotion (build healthy public policy, create supportive environments for health, strengthen community action for health, develop personal skills, and re-orient health services) and three basic HP strategies (to enable, mediate, and advocate).
What is the best definition of health promotion? ›
Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions.
What are the 4 types of disease prevention? ›
Understand the four levels of prevention (primordial, primary, secondary, and tertiary) (78-3)
What are examples of health promotion strategies? ›
Health Promotion International lays out five key action areas for health promotion:
- Reorient health services. ...
- Create a supportive environment. ...
- Develop personal skills. ...
- Strengthen community action. ...
- Building healthy public policy.
Primary prevention refers to actions aimed at avoiding the manifestation of a disease (this may include actions to improve health through changing the impact of social and economic determinants on health; the provision of information on behavioral and medical health risks, alongside consultation and measures to ...
What are the 3 types of health promotion? ›
The basic strategies used for health promotion are enabling, mediating, and advocacy. Illness prevention is also known as health protection.
What are the three levels of health promotion and disease prevention? ›
- Primary Prevention—intervening before health effects occur, through.
- Secondary Prevention—screening to identify diseases in the earliest.
- Tertiary Prevention—managing disease post diagnosis to slow or stop.
Healthy Settings key principles include community participation, partnership, empowerment and equity.
What are examples of disease prevention? ›
Eating healthy foods, getting enough exercise, and refraining from tobacco and excessive alcohol use confer numerous health benefits—including possibly preventing the onset of chronic diseases.
What is the goal of health promotion? ›
The purpose of health promotion is to positively influence the health behavior of individuals and communities as well as the living and working conditions that influence their health.
Which actions would be considered under the role of health promotion? ›
Health Promotion And Illness Prevention
| Question | Answer |
|---|
| Which actions apply to the concept of health promotion? | Participating in a routine exercise program Informing people of what they could do to stay healthy Assessing community assets and strengths that influence health and well-being |
18 more rowsThe Ottawa Charter outlined three (3) strategies for health promotion: advocacy, mediating, and enabling.
What is the meaning of prevention and promotion? ›
Prevention is essentially a medical action that deals with the individual or risk groups as well as the observance of physical health. In contrast with this, health promotion is concerned with the whole population in its daily life and not only selected individuals or groups (von Troschke 2004).
What are the three stages of health defined by who? ›
The WHO constitution states: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
What is the difference between disease prevention and health promotion quizlet? ›
Disease prevention differs from health promotion in that disease prevention is targeted toward a specific disease or diseases. REASON: Health promotion includes all efforts that seek to move people closer to optimal well-being or higher levels of wellness.
