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Health Promotion

Good health is the best resource for personal, economic, and social progress.

The World Health Organization's Ottawa Charter indicates that Health Promotion constitutes a global, political, and social process that encompasses actions aimed at both strengthen the abilities and capacities of individuals and communities, and, ​even more important, modifying social, environmental, and economic conditions in order to favor its positive impact on individual and collective health.

Although health is a dynamic concept, it is usually approached from the perspective of loss (diseases or risk factors). Health promotion recognizes health as a positive concept and focuses on the factors that contribute to it. It aims to have all people develop their greatest health potential, considering the assets of the community and the underlying social conditions that determine better or worse health - the Social Determinants of Health - knowing that in order to achieve health equity, a redistribution of power and resources is necessary.

The Health Promotion approach implies a particular way of collaborating: it starts from the various needs of the population, fosters its abilities and strengths, and empowers. It is participatory, intersectoral, sensitive to the context, and operates at multiple levels. “Communities, organizations, and institutions working together to create conditions and settings that ensure health and well-being for all people, leaving no one behind.”

PAHO Response

The current health promotion mandate for the region of the Americas, the Strategy and Plan of Action on health promotion in the context of the SDGs 2019-2030 approved at the 57th Directing Council (2019), proposes 4 essential strategic lines of action to promote health:

Health Promotion encourages changes in the environment to generate health and well-being. It operates in the places or contexts in which people participate in daily activities; where social, economic, environmental, organizational, and personal factors interact.

Schools, universities, houses, workplaces, markets, and other common spaces are key settings to gain health throughout the life course.

Participation generates health in itself and, moreover, is essential for the effectiveness and sustainability of health promotion measures.

Promoting health means creating spaces for participation, networking, reinforcing the role of communities and enhancing their assets and capacities so that they can advocate for their needs and perspectives.

In addition, a key factor of promoting health is empowering people and communities so that they can be meaningfully involved in making decisions that affect their lives.

Good governance for health implies including intersectoral action, social participation and equity.

It is crucial to consider the impact that policies from sectors such as education, employment, economy, housing, transport, and urban planning have on health.  Therefore, to promote health, a whole-of-government and society-wide approach that creates collective solutions to improve health as an integral part of well-being and economic and social development is essential.

Scientific evidence shows that certain factors such as permanent employment status, level of education or income, housing conditions, access to green areas, and places to walk, directly influences health.

The evidence also shows that there are effective public policies to promote health with equity.

Local governments play a key role in health promotion given their ability to act on environments, work intersectorally, integrate community participation, and adapt interventions to the specific needs and contexts of the population.

Since the Ottawa Charter in 1986, health promotion acquires a prominent role by recognizing that health systems and services go beyond the provision of clinical and medical services. To achieve this, a change in attitude and organization of health services is necessary to focus on the needs of the person as a whole.

Health Promotion is a key element for strengthening health systems and their ability to respond to the health needs of individuals, families, and communities, by focusing on ensuring health at the highest possible level with solidarity and equity.

Every contact with a person can be an opportunity to not only provide a clinical service, but also to assess the conditions in which the person lives and works, to learn about their family and social context and to connect with the community assets. It also provides an opportunity to coordinate with other services such as social protection and housing to fulfill the detected needs of the people.

The health sector must make health promotion more relevant and concrete, and work with communities to create healthy living conditions, based on primary health care.

Health promotion is also an essential function of public health, which must be included in the processes of evaluation, policy development, resource allocation, and in the dimensions of access to health services (EPHF).

Highlighted
Women Mayors for Healthy Municipalities of the Americas.

Women mayors from the Americas region reflect on the importance of making health central to the agenda of local governments. The interviews were conducted during the VI Meeting of Mayors for Healthy Municipalities, organized by PAHO and held in Huechuraba, Chile, on November 2 and 3, 2023.

Local governance for health and well-being: intersectoriality, participation and equity.

Governance for health and wellbeing includes a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to generate collective solutions that improve health and wellbeing through co-creation practices, social change and institutional commitment. Several mayors from the region reflected on these issues during the VI Meeting of Mayors for Healthy Municipalities, organized by PAHO and held in Huechuraba, Chile, on November 2 and 3, 2023.

Urban Governance for Health and Wellbeing Project by PAHO/WHO in Kennedy, Bogotá. 

Preliminary results from the Mayor's Office of Kennedy, in the city of Bogotá (Colombia), from the Urban Governance for Health and Wellbeing Project by PAHO/WHO. The project aims to strengthen local action through a participatory and intersectoral process that promotes governance for health and wellbeing.

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