International School of Asia and the Pacific – Kalinga

College of Pharmacy
Public Health with Pharmacoepidemiology

Activity 4 Community Health Promotion

Name: Mendoza, Jhunlaine Kate G.__

Introduction

As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), community health promotion is the
process of enabling people in the community to increase control over, and to improve, their
health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behavior towards a wide range of social and
environmental interventions. As a core function of public health, health promotion supports
governments, communities and individuals to cope with and address health challenges. This is
accomplished by building healthy public policies, creating supportive environments, and
strengthening community action and personal skills.

The three strategies for health promotion are to:

1. Advocate – Political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral and biological
factors can all favor or harm health. Health promotion aims to make these conditions
favorable, through advocacy for health.

2. Enable – Health promotion focuses on achieving equity in health. Health promotion

action aims to reduce differences in health status and to ensure the availability of equal
opportunities and resources to enable all people to achieve their full health potential. This
includes a secure foundation in a supportive environment, access to information, life skills and
opportunities to make healthy choices.

3. Mediate – The prerequisites and prospects for health cannot be ensured by the health
sector alone. Health promotion demands coordinated action by all concerned, including
governments, health and other social and economic sectors, non-government and voluntary
organizations, local authorities, industry and the media.

Objectives
Students should be able to:
1. Differentiate community health education from health promotion in terms of purpose and
strategies
2. Plan and execute a health promotion activity for a community

Activity A. Community Health Education versus Health Promotion Individual Work

Read articles regarding health education and promotion from different sources – textbooks,
public health journals, internet, etc. Based on your readings, compare community health
education from health promotion in terms of the following:
 Health Education versus Health Promotion
Health Education
Definition  Health Education is transmission of what is
known about health into desirable
individual, family and community behavior
patterns by means of educational processes
Purpose  The goals of health education are to
increase awareness of local environmental
conditions, potential exposures, and the
impacts of exposures on individual and
public health.
 Health education prepare community
members to receive and better understand
the findings of your public health work.
 Community health educators work with
public health departments, schools,
government offices and even local
nonprofits to design educational programs
and other resources to address a
community’s specific needs.
 Health education also extends into policy
and legislation development at a local, state
and national level, informing and influencing
key decisions that impact community health
 Health education boost a community’s
economy by reducing healthcare spending
and lost productivity due to preventable
illness.
Scope  Healthful living
 Health services
 Health instructions
 Food and Nutrition
 Information about good health habits
 Certain common diseases and their
prevention and control
 First aid safety measures
 Postures
 Water and Air – Pollution and purification
 Sleep, rest, recreation and relaxation, etc
 Physical activities and programmes
 Provision of school and health services
 Mental health and personal hygiene
Strategies  Assess individual and community needs for
health education. (See activity: Developing
a Community Profile)
 Ask community members about factors that
directly or indirectly increase the degree of
exposure to environmental contamination.
Factors may include community members
accessing a hazardous site or the presence
of lead in house paint, soil, or water.
 Develop a health education plan.
 Listen for opportunities to provide health
education throughout your community
engagement work.
Heath Promotion
 Health promotion is the process of enabling
people to increase control over and to improve
their health. Health promotion is not just the
responsibility of the health sector, but goes
beyond healthy lifestyles to well-being.
 Health promotion involves the population as a
whole in the context of their everyday life, rather
than focusing on people at risk from specific
diseases.
 Health promotion is directed towards action on
the determinants or cause of health. This
requires a close co-operation between sectors
beyond health care reflecting the diversity of
conditions which influence health.
 Aims particularly at effective and concrete public
participation. This requires the further
development of problem-defining and decision-
making life skills, both individually and
collectively, and the promotion of effective
participation mechanisms.
 Health promotion combines diverse, but
complementary methods or approaches including
communication, education, legislation, fiscal
measures, organizational change, community
change, community development and
spontaneous local activities against health
hazards.
 Health Promotion at the level of promotion
 Health Promotion at the level of preventive
 Health Promotion at the level of curative
 Health Promotion at the level of rehabilitative
 Developing public policy.
 Developing personal skills.
 Strengthening community action.
 Creating supportive environments.
 Reorienting health services
 Advocacy
 Social Support
 Empowerment
 Build Healthy Public Policy
 Create Supportive Environments
 Strengthen Community Actions
 Develop Personal Skills
 Reorient Health Services
B. Health Promotion Activity for a Community Group
Work
Typical activities for health promotion and wellness programs include: a)
Communication
Raising awareness about healthy behaviors for the general public.
Examples of communication strategies include public service announcements, health
fairs, mass media campaigns, information, education and communication materials
(IECs) like posters, leaflets, comics, and newsletters.

b) Education
Empowering behavior change and actions through increased knowledge.
Examples of health education strategies include courses, trainings, and support groups.

c) Policy, Systems, and Environment

Making systematic changes – 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.

Procedures:
1. Identify a community or area for applying your health promotion activity (i.e., school
campus, work sites, etc.)
2. Learn about the common health issues (physical activity and fitness, nutrition and weight
control, stress reduction, alcohol, smoking, drug addiction, communicable diseases – TB,
HIV, Dengue Fever, etc.) in the area by observations and conducting interviews or surveys.
3. Let the respondents identify and rank these health issues as to priority or significance.
4. Plan and choose your health promotion activity based on the prioritized health issue.
5. Execute your health promotion activity.
6. Document your health promotion activity and share it to the class.
7. Explain why your group’s health promotion activity is the most appropriate for addressing the
health issue.

Study Questions

1. Below are selected theories and models used for health promotion and disease prevention.
Describe each of the theories and models and discuss how they can be used as a guide
for health promotion and disease prevention

a. Ecological Models

Ecological models recognize multiple levels of influence on health behaviors, including,

Intrapersonal/individual factors, which influence behavior such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs,
and personality. Interpersonal factors, such as interactions with other people, which can provide
social support or create barriers to interpersonal growth that promotes healthy behavior.
Institutional and organizational factors, including the rules, regulations, policies, and informal
structures that constrain or promote healthy behaviors. Community factors, such as formal or
informal social norms that exist among individuals, groups, or organizations, can limit or enhance
healthy behaviors. Public policy factors, including local, state, and federal policies and laws that
regulate or support health actions and practices for disease prevention including early detection,
control, and management.

The ecological perspective is a useful framework for understanding the range of factors
that influence health and well-being. It is a model that can assist in providing a complete
perspective of the factors that affect specific health behaviors, including the social determinants
of health. Because of this, ecological frameworks can be used to integrate components of other
theories and models, thus ensuring the design of a comprehensive health promotion or disease
prevention program or policy approach.
b. Health Belief Models

The Health Belief Model is a theoretical model that can be used to guide health
promotion and disease prevention programs. It is used to explain and predict individual changes
in health behaviors. It is one of the most widely used models for understanding health behaviors.
The model defines the key factors that influence health behaviors as an individual's perceived
threat to sickness or disease (perceived susceptibility), belief of consequence (perceived
severity), potential positive benefits of action (perceived benefits), perceived barriers to action,
exposure to factors that prompt action (cues to action), and confidence in ability to succeed (self-
efficacy).

The Health Belief Model can be used to design short- and long-term interventions. The
five-key action-related components that determine the ability of the Health Belief Model to
identify key decision-making points that influence health behaviors are:

 Gathering information by conducting a health needs assessments and other efforts to determine
who is at risk and the population(s) that should be targeted.
 Conveying the consequences of the health issues associated with risk behaviors in a clear and
unambiguous fashion to understand perceived severity.
 Communicating to the target population the steps that are involved in taking the recommended
action and highlighting the benefits to action.
 Providing assistance in identifying and reducing barriers to action.
 Demonstrating actions through skill development activities and providing support that enhances
self-efficacy and the likelihood of successful behavior changes.

c. Transtheoretical Model

The Stages of Change Model, also called the Transtheoretical Model, explains an
individual's readiness to change their behavior. It describes the process of behavior change as
occurring in stages. These stages include:
Pre-contemplation: There is no intention of taking action; Contemplation: There are intentions to
take action and a plan to do so in the near future; Preparation: There is intention to take action
and some steps have been taken; Action: Behavior has been changed for a short period of time;
Maintenance: Behavior has been changed and continues to be maintained for the long-term and,
Termination: There is no desire to return to prior negative behaviors.

The Stages of Change model can be applied to health promotion and disease prevention
programs to address a range of health behaviors, populations, and settings. It may be an
appropriate model for health promotion and disease prevention programs related to worksite
wellness, tobacco use, weight management, medication compliance, addiction, and physical
activity, among other health topics.

d. Social Cognitive Theory

Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) describes the influence of individual experiences, the
actions of others, and environmental factors on individual health behaviors. SCT provides
opportunities for social support through instilling expectations, self-efficacy, and using
observational learning and other reinforcements to achieve behavior change.

The SCT can be applied as a theoretical framework in different settings and populations.
It is frequently used to guide behavior change interventions. It may be particularly useful in rural
communities for examining how individuals interact with their surroundings. The SCT can be used
to understand the influence of social determinants of health and a person's past experiences on
behavior change.

e. Theory of Reasoned Action or Planned Behavior

 The Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior – suggest that a
person's health behavior is determined by their intention to perform a behavior. A person's
intention to perform a behavior (behavioral intention) is predicted by 1) a person's attitude
toward the behavior, and 2) subjective norms regarding the behavior. Subjective norms are the
result of social and environmental surroundings and a person's perceived control over the
behavior. Generally, positive attitude and positive subjective norms result in greater perceived
control and increase the likelihood of intentions governing changes in behavior.

The Theory of Reasoned Action/Planned Behavior provide useful information for

predicting health behaviors and for planning and implementing health promotion and disease
prevention programs. Subjective norms can be used to describe the behaviors of healthcare
providers, patients, care providers, and others in the community. These theories have been used
to guide health promotion and disease prevention asthma counseling and treatment compliant,
tobacco use interventions, and anti-drug media campaigns, among other topics.