HEALTH PROMOTION

Throughout the United States, YMCA/YWCA – sponsored wellness programs, commercial fitness club, and corporate fitness centers offer risk-reduction programs under the direction of qualified instructors, many of whom are university graduates in disciplines such as exercise science, wellness management, and health promotion.  Using approaches similar to those employed in preventive medicine, these nonphysicians  health professionals attempt to guide their clients toward activities and behaviors that will  lower their risk of chronic illness.  Unlike preventive medicine, with its sometimes invasive assessment procedures and medicine, with its sometimes invasive assessment procedures and medication-based therapies, health promotion programs are not legally defined as medical practices and thus do not require the involvement of physicians.  In addition, the fitness focus, social interaction, and healthy lifestyle orientation these programs provide tend to mask the emphasis on preventing chronic illness that would be the selling point of such efforts if they were undertaken as preventive medicine.  In fact, it is likely that people receiving health promotion in these settings do not recognize it as such.  Rather, they are only submitting to assessments and listening to health – related information as incidental parts of personal goals, such as losing weight, preparing for their first marathon, or simply friends for lunch hour basketball.

COMMUNITY HEALTH PROMOTION

In addition to the practices just described, a group – oriented form of health promotion is offered in many communities.  This approach to improving health through risk reduction is directed at empowering community groups, such as church congregations or a neighborhood association, so they can develop, operate, and financially sustain their own programs with little direct involvement of health promotion specialists.

The key to successful community – based health promotion is empowerment.  In the context of health, empowerment refers to a process in which individuals or groups of people gain increasing control over their health.  To take control over health matters, individuals and groups must learn to “liberate” themselves from a variety of barriers that tend to restrict health enhancement.

Empowerment programs have produced positive health consequences for individuals and groups that traditionally have been underserved by the health care system, such as minority populations.  Once such people are given needed information, inroads into the political process, and skills for accessing funding sources, they become better able to plan, implement, and operate programs tailored to their unique health need.  In many communities, empowered people have organized grassroots campaigns to prevent neighborhood violence, improve childhood nutrition, promote healthy lifestyle, or prevent drug use among youth.  When successful, these programs stand as excellent examples of the reality that people can make a difference when they become empowered.