5 Health Promotion Action Areas Every Nurse Should Know

Health promotion is a powerful tool that creates a positive, lasting impact on patients’ lives. Health promotion educates patients on how to boost wellness through simple practices they can incorporate into daily life.

Through three basic strategies and five promotion action areas, you can help your patients live their best, most healthy lives.

3 Basic Strategies

There are three basic health promotion strategies per Rural Health Information Hub: health communication; health education; and policy, systems, and environmental change.

• Health communication helps people better understand health needs, equipping them for important individual health decisions. Taking verbal and written forms, health communication encourages healthful activities and improves health literacy. It also bridges understanding with cultural considerations about health. Flu vaccination posters, health screening brochures, and discussions with patients about heart disease are all health communications.
• Health education teaches people about different health conditions to bolster prevention or early treatment. These learning sessions are often focused on target populations. For example, poorer neighborhoods may be candidates for nutrition and physical activity lessons to prevent or combat Type 2 diabetes.
• Policy, systems, and environmental change (PSEs) round out the basic health promotion strategies. Policy change would include smoke-free entryways and safety equipment in the workplace. Systems change deals with the use of innovations, technologies, or certifications to change how health problems are solved. Environmental change works to solve population health challenges with more parks and nutritious food availability.

Nurses can work with these basic strategies to promote health within the communities they treat.

5 Key Action Areas for Health Promotion

Health Promotion International lays out five key action areas for health promotion:

1. Reorient health services. This works to improve the entire population’s health and allow everyone to access health resources, whether sick or well.
2. Create a supportive environment. Surroundings that support health make it easier to achieve optimal wellness. The goal is to foster an environment that physically and socially assists in health success. Eliminating harmful practices is also part of creating a supportive space.
3. Develop personal skills. People have to understand pertinent health information to take the necessary steps to improve their own health. By knowing what could cause illness, individuals can proactively monitor and support their wellness.
4. Strengthen community action. People living in the same area or with the same health concerns can bond together to advocate for policy changes and the development of new programs.
5. Building healthy public policy. Activities funded or conducted by the government can increase awareness and provide resources and education to help people take control of their personal health.

Health promotion aims to empower patients to make health-positive choices and actions. Nurses are uniquely located in the healthcare system to contribute to health promotion, given their one-on-one contact with patients. Ultimately, everyone benefits.

Learn more about the UMFK online RN to BSN program.

Sources:

• Rural Health Information Hub: Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Strategies
• Rural Health Information Hub: Health Communication
• Rural Health Information Hub: Health Education
• Rural Health Information Hub: Policy, Systems, and Environmental Change
• Health Promotion International: Applying the Ottawa Charter to Inform Health Promotion Programme Design