MODELS AND THEORIES OF HEALTH PROMOTION

CHAPTER 7

MODELS OF HEALTH PROMOTION

A more analytic means of identifying types of health promotion

Seek to represent reality in some way and show in a simplified form how different
things connect

Models of health promotion may help to:

o Conceptualize or map the field

o Interrogate and analyze existing practice
o Plan and chart the possibilities for interventions
BEATTIE’S ANALYTIC MODEL
o Encourages you to think theoretically and come up with new strategies and
ways of working
o Offers a structural analysis of the health promotion repertoire of
approaches
CAPLAN AND HOLLAND’S ANALYTIC MODEL
o Four paradigms for health promotion generated from the dimensions of
mode of intervention (top down and expert led) to negotiated (bottom up
Suggest that there are essentially four paradigms or ways of looking at health and valuing individual autonomy)
promotion o Other dimension relates to the focus of the intervention which ranges from
a focus on individuals who are responsible for their own health to a focus
First dimension
on the collective and roots of ill health
→ concerned with the nature of knowledge

Knowledge

→ seen as based along a continuum which ranges from subjective approaches

to understanding through to objective approaches.

OBJECTIVE

→ explanations deriving from science

Suggest that there are essentially four paradigms or ways of looking at health
promotion

Secondary dimension

→ relates to assumptions concerning the nature of the society, ranges from

theories of radical change to theories of social regulation
 TANNAHILL’S DESCRIPTIVE MODEL TONES’S EMPOWERMENT MODEL

o Widely accepted by healthcare workers → Has its cardinal principle of the goal of enabling people to gain control over
o Three overlapping spheres of activity: health education, health protection their own health
and prevention → Prioritizes empowerment, which is seen as both the core value and the
core strategy underpinning and defining the practice of health promotion

Health promotion
Health education
→ healthy public policy x health education
→ communication to enhance well-being and prevent ill health through
influencing knowledge and attitudes. Education

Prevention → key to empowering both lay and professional people by raising

consciousness of health issues
→ reducing or avoiding the risk of diseases and ill health primarily through
medical interventions.

Health protection

→ safeguarding population health through legislative, fiscal or social

measures. This is not how the term ‘health protection’ is currently used,
which is to control infections.

THEORIES IN HEALTH PROMOTION

Theories

→ organized sets of knowledge applicable in a variety of circumstances seek

to analyse, explain or predict a particular phenomenon or why something
happens, and the ways in which change takes place in individuals,
communities, organizations or societies.
 the backbone of the processes used to plan, implement and evaluate
health promotion interventions, as they remind us what we are trying to
do, how activities are supposed to work and what needs to be in place for
them to work.

THEORIES IN HEALTH PROMOTION

LEVEL OF ACTIVITY KEY AREAS FOR CHANGE
THEORIES OR MODELS
INDIVIDUALS How can we motivate individuals to Health belief
change model
Stages of
change/models
How do individuals learn? Social learning
theory
What is the influence of social norms? Theory of
planned behavior
Why do individuals relapse or not Theory of
comply? reasoned action
COMMUNITY Why do some individuals adopt new Diffusion of
ideas readily with others are more innovation theory
conservative? Community
mobilization
ORGANIZATIONAL Why do some organizations resist Theories of
CHANGE change? organizational
change
What factors in setting create health? Settings’
theories: socio-
ecological,
salutogenesis
POPULATION Why do we market or design effective Social marketing
communication to the general public? theory
 THE POLITICS OF HEALTH PROMOTION

WHAT IS POLITICS?

Heywood (2007) identifies a fourfold classification of politics.

1. Politics as government

→ party politics and state activities.

2. Politics as public life

→ the management of community affairs.

3. Politics as conflict resolution

→ negotiation, compromise and conciliation strategies.

4. Politics as power

→ the production, distribution and use of scarce resources.

HEALTH AND WELFARE IDEOLOGIES