The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion is the name of an international agreement signed at the First International Conference on Health Promotion, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and held in Ottawa, Canada, in November 1986. [1] It launched a series of actions among international organizations, national governments and local communities to achieve the goal of "Health For All" by the year 2000 and beyond through better health promotion.[ citation needed ]
The thirtieth WHO World Health Assembly, held in 1977, had highlighted the importance of promoting health so that all the international citizens had an "economically productive" level of health by the year 2000. Further, a localised European taskforce developed a strategy for health promotion in the WHO European Region.[ citation needed ]
In the context of this charter, the concept of 'health' is particular. It covers the extent to which a group or individual can fulfil their ambitions and needs, on the one hand, and evolve with or adapt to the environment, on the other. Health is thus seen as a resource for everyday life, not as the goal of life; it is a positive concept that emphasises social and individual resources as well as physical capabilities. Thus, health promotion is not just a health issue, but goes beyond healthy lifestyles to well-being. [2] [3]
The fundamental conditions and resources for health are:[ citation needed ]
Five action areas for health promotion were identified in the charter: [1]
The basic strategies for health promotion were prioritized as:[ citation needed ]
Internationally: [4]
Within countries:
Even 30 years later, this charter is still considered as a seminal document and template for health promotion. [5]
A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations.
Health has a variety of definitions, which have been used for different purposes over time. Health can be promoted by encouraging healthful activities, such as regular physical exercise and adequate sleep, and by reducing or avoiding unhealthful activities or situations, such as smoking or excessive stress. Some factors affecting health are due to individual choices, such as whether to engage in a high-risk behavior, while others are due to structural causes, such as whether the society is arranged in a way that makes it easier or harder for people to get necessary healthcare services. Still, other factors are beyond both individual and group choices, such as genetic disorders.
Healthy city is a term used in public health and urban design to stress the impact of policy on human health. It is a municipality that continually improves on a physical and a social level until environmental and pathological conditions are reached establishing an acceptable morbidity rate for the population. Its modern form derives from a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative on Healthy Cities and Villages in 1986, but has a history dating back to the mid 19th century. The term was developed in conjunction with the European Union, but rapidly became international as a way of establishing healthy public policy at the local level through health promotion. It emphasises the multi-dimensionality of health as laid out in WHO's constitution and, more recently, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. An alternative term is Healthy Communities, or Municipios saludables in parts of Latin America.
Health human resources (HHR) – also known as human resources for health (HRH) or health workforce – is defined as "all people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance positive health outcomes", according to World Health Organization's World Health Report 2006. Human resources for health are identified as one of the six core building blocks of a health system. They include physicians, nursing professionals, pharmacists, midwives, dentists, allied health professions, community health workers, and other social service and health care providers.
Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health, as well as sexual and reproductive health education.
Primary health care (PHC) is "essential health care" that is based on scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology. This makes universal health care accessible to all individuals and families in a community. PHC initiatives allow for the full participation of community members in implementation and decision making. Services are provided at a cost that the community and the country can afford at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination. In other words, PHC is an approach to health beyond the traditional health care system that focuses on health equity-producing social policy. PHC includes all areas that play a role in health, such as access to health services, environment and lifestyle. Thus, primary healthcare and public health measures, taken together, may be considered as the cornerstones of universal health systems. The World Health Organization, or WHO, elaborates on the goals of PHC as defined by three major categories, "empowering people and communities, multisectoral policy and action; and primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services[1]." Based on these definitions, PHC cannot only help an individual after being diagnosed with a disease or disorder, but can actively contribute to preventing such issues by understanding the individual as a whole.
Health promotion is, as stated in the 1986 World Health Organization (WHO) Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, the "process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health."
The social determinants of health are the economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status. They are the health promoting factors found in one's living and working conditions, rather than individual risk factors that influence the risk for a disease, or vulnerability to disease or injury. The distribution of social determinants is often shaped by public policies that reflect prevailing political ideologies of the area.
Health 21 or Health21 is the name given to the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region policy framework derived from the "health-for-all policy for the twenty-first century" passed by the World Health Assembly in 1998. The framework was called "Health 21" not only because it dealt with health in the 21st century, but also because it laid out 21 "targets" for improving the health of Europeans.
The Jakarta Declaration on Leading Health Promotion into the 21st Century is the name of an international agreement that was signed at the World Health Organization's 1997 Fourth International Conference on Health Promotion held in Jakarta. The declaration reiterated the importance of the agreements made in the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, and added emphasis to certain aspects of health promotion.
Health ecology is an emerging field that studies the impact of ecosystems on human health. It examines alterations in the biological, physical, social, and economic environments to understand how these changes affect mental and physical human health. Health ecology focuses on a transdisciplinary approach to understanding all the factors which influence an individual's physiological, social, and emotional well-being.
The International Network of Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services (HPH) is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that was initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1988. It is also known simply as HPH, or "Health Promoting Hospitals." HPH is based on the settings approach to health promotion philosophy of the WHO as outlined in the WHO Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. The organization's main aim is to improve the health gain of hospitals and health services by a bundle of strategies targeting patients, staff, and the community.
Family resource programs (FRP) are Canadian community-based organizations that intend to support families in a variety of ways through systems such as family resource centers, family places, family centers, and neighborhood houses. They can also be linked to schools, community centers, child care programs, women's centers, and native friendship centers. This includes programs such as Ontario Early Years and military-funded family centers. They are generally grassroots organizations that aim to be responsive to local issues.
People's Health Movement (PHM) is a global network of grassroots health activists, civil society organizations and academic institutions particularly from developing countries. PHM currently has bases in more than 70 countries that include both individuals and well-established circles with their own governance structures. It has chapters in South Asia, Africa, Pacific (Australia), South America, Central America, North America, Europe and several other countries. PHM works towards the revitalisation of Primary Health Care (PHC), as described in the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978.
The Alliance for Healthy Cities (AFHC) is a cooperative international alliance aimed at protecting and enhancing the health and health care of city dwellers. It is composed of groups of cities, urban districts and other organizations from countries around the world in exchanging information to achieve the goal through a health promotion approach called Healthy Cities. The chair city for the alliance is Ichikawa, Japan.
The Regional Forum on Environment and Health in Southeast and East Asian Countries is a global framework for action provided by Agenda 21 of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development; the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation of 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development; the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and the recommendations of the fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development in Asia and the Pacific on enhancing the environmental sustainability of economic growth. The second Ministerial Regional Forum was held 14–16 July 2010 in Jeju Province, South Korea. The forum is held every three years; the first was in Bangkok in August 2007.
Soil governance refers to the policies, strategies, and the processes of decision-making employed by nation states and local governments regarding the use of soil. Globally, governance of the soil has been limited to an agricultural perspective due to increased food insecurity from the most populated regions on earth. The Global Soil Partnership, GSP, was initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its members with the hope to improve governance of the limited soil resources of the planet in order to guarantee healthy and productive soils for a food-secure world, as well as support other essential ecosystem services.
Ilona Kickbusch is a German political scientist best known for her contribution to health promotion and global health. She is adjunct professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.
Health in All Policies (HiAP) was a term first used in Europe during the Finnish presidency of the European Union (EU), in 2006, with the aim of collaborating across sectors to achieve common goals. It is a strategy to include health considerations in policy making across different sectors that influence health, such as transportation, agriculture, land use, housing, public safety, and education. It reaffirms public health's essential role in addressing policy and structural factors affecting health, as articulated by the Ten Essential Public Health Services, and it has been promoted as an opportunity for the public health sector to engage a broader array of partners.
Rüdiger Krech is a German public health expert who currently works as a senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO). An advocate for universal health coverage, social determinants of health, Health in All Policies and social protection, he is the Director of Health Promotion at WHO.