Title: Health promotion
Course: Health Education, Advocacy and Community Mobilisation Part 1 - Ethiopia (Full)

Health promotion

In the previous section you have learned about the rationale for making an effort in health education and now in this section you will learn more about the concept of health promotion.

Remember that the World Health Organization in its Ottawa Charter said that 'health promotion is defined as the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health'. The aim of health promotion is to reduce the underlying causes of ill-health so that there is a long-term reduction in many diseases.

Can you think of any examples of health promotion work that you as Health Extension Practitioner might be involved in? To help you think about this you may want to consider examples in your own community in the past few years (Figure 1.5).

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Some examples include vaccinating children, implementing nutritional interventions, distributing ITNs at community level and destroying places favorable for the breeding of mosquitoes. These and other related activities are all part of health promotion. You may want to begin a list of other health promotion activities as you encounter them in this Module.

Figure 1.5 Working closely with the community is a really important part of the role of Health Extension Practitioners. (Photo: AMREF/Zeinya Tokha)