Healthcare promotion is a concept that, on the surface, can certainly sound like a positive concept, but what exactly is it? Also referred to as health promotion, this field of positive effort is quite broad, but it shares in a singular and narrow item of focus. For more on health management ideology today, read on.
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Healthcare Promotion: The Basics
As a whole, healthcare promotion is the greater effort of the healthcare community and others to spread better health and access to quality healthcare. As to organization, this goal can be worked and coordinated by large organizations, governments, and non-profits, or it can be facilitated by a single individual. If better health and healthcare are the aims, then the activity, whatever it may be, may be considered a form of healthcare promotion. While the World Health Organization is widely considered the leading authority and facilitator of health promotion efforts worldwide, there are also many other organizations directly devoted to the cause.
Examples
One doesn’t have to look far to find some great examples of healthcare promotion in action today. Social services offices and the provision of Medicare and Medicaid are examples as well as organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and The American Red Cross. These groups work to provide critical medical services and education to areas in the greatest of need. These include poor and undeveloped nations and regions, disaster-stricken areas, and anyone otherwise in need but with accessibility or knowledge issues creating barriers to care.
History
While certainly, efforts to spread better health and healthcare access to others have been occurring in varying forms for arguably thousands of years, today’s officially defined movement of healthcare promotion is accredited to the start date of 1986. It was at this time the World Health Organization cites the first International Conference on Health Promotion, in Ottawa, Canada, as the birth date of the movement. Here, the term and goal of “Health For All” was declared, and an awareness and involvement campaign was transmitted throughout the medical world, public and private. From here on, the basic strategies of the effort would also have lain: advocacy, enabling, and mediation.
The “advocacy” component is about boosting any factors known to scientifically encourage good health. “Enabling” is the goal focused on making health equity available to all. Finally, “mediation” here is the specific area focused on facilitating collaboration across all sectors and industries.
WHO Facts and Figures
The WHO also attributes a number of very telling health and healthcare facts and figures directly to the specific campaign and concept of healthcare promotion. Just based on child consequence alone, the organization cites:
– Over 1.7 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 years died in 2016.
– In just 40 years the number of school-age children and adolescents with obesity has risen more than 10-fold, from 11 million to 124 million (2016 estimates).
– More than 80% of the world’s adolescent population is insufficiently physically active.
– Nearly 570 million children lacked a basic drinking water service at their school.
The health of humanity’s future is as important as any other global issue facing the planet. Many people work tirelessly to help encourage and facilitate that health for right now as well as the future. This is the world of healthcare promotion.