Infrastructure For Health Promotion

Healthy public policy and advocacy
Healthy public policy improves the conditions under which people live: secure, safe, adequate and
sustainable livelihoods, lifestyles, and environment, including, housing, education, nutrition, information
exchange, child care, transportation, and necessary community and personal social and health services.
Removing systemic barriers can be very difficult and contentious. Advocacy to create changes to
structures and systems is sometimes needed to influence decisions about public policies and resource
allocations within political, economic, and social systems. Advocacy approaches may be relationship-
based. Advocacy may support groups and individuals, particularly those who have less social, economic
and political power in society, to:
 Express their view and concerns;

 Access information and services;
 Protect their rights and responsibilities;
 Explore choices and options.
advocacy can bring public health issues to the forefront for governments and other decision makers.
Community development and social mobilization
Community development / action: A process of collective community efforts directed towards increasing
community control over the determinants of health, improving health and becoming empowered to
apply individual and collective skills to address health priorities and meet respective health needs (WHO,
1998). Social mobilization is the process that makes things happen. It is a process that engages and
galvanizes people to take action towards the achievement of a goal for the common good. The common
good may be defined situationally, both in terms of qualitative and/ or quantitative benefits that impact
on the greatest number of people in the community. Social mobilization can aim at mustering national
and local support for health promotion through an open process that gives ownership to the community
as a whole. The process is concerned with mobilizing human and financial resources through five main
approaches:"
Health education and behaviour change communication
Health education is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO Centre for Health Development,
2004) as any combination of learning experiences designed to help individuals and communities improve
their health, by increasing their knowledge or influencing their attitudes. Health education ensures;
community participation as an essential part of planning, promotion of self-esteem is integral to HE
programs, voluntarism is ethical principle on which all health education programs should be built and
that health education respects cultural norms and take account of economic and environmental
constraints faced by people. Other principles are that good human relations are of utmost importance in
learning. There also needs to be evaluation, accuracy and appropriateness of methods used in the
programs. One of the key repetitive messages of health education is behavior change
The behavior change communication (BBC) is a strategic use of communication to promote positive
health outcomes, based on proven theories and models of behavior change. It employs a systematic
process beginning with formative research and behavior analysis, followed by communication planning,
implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. The objectives of the BBC activities are
 To enable people to define their own problems and needs
 To understand what they can do about these problems with their own resources combined with
outside support
 To decide on most appropriate action to promote healthy living and community wellbeing.
Organizational change and capacity development
Sophisticated understandings of organizational dynamics and processes of organizational change are

crucial for the development and success of health promotion initiatives. Theory
has a valuable contribution to make in under- standing organizational change, for identifying inﬂuential f
actors that should be the focus of change efforts and for selecting the strategies that can be applied to p
romote change. Ziglio and Apfel (Ziglio and Apfel, 2009), commenting on the actions required
to address the priorities outlined by the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health,
emphasized the need to assess and build the capacity of health systems and other sectors. Capacities for
policy advocacy, development, implementation and evaluation were highlighted as important. Most
recently, in the Helsinki Statement on Health in all Policies issued at the 8 th Global Conference on Health
Promotion in Helsinki, Finland, there was recognition that building institutional capacity and skills will
play a central role in achieving the implementation of Health in All Policies (World Health Organisation
and Ministry of Social Affairs and Health –Finland, 2013). The Helsinki statement emphasized capacity
building in relation to the structures, processes and resources required for policy implementation across
sectors. Capacity building is understood to involve actions to improve knowledge and skills, support and
infrastructure within organizations, and partnerships for action. The purpose of these actions is to create
new approaches, values and structures for addressing health issues and ultimately sustainable systems
for the ongoing execution of programmes. This situates organizations, their objectives and the way they
conduct their day-to-day business, as a foremost concern in health promotion.
Infrastructure for health promotion
Those human and material resources, organizational and administrative structures, policies, regulations
and incentives which facilitate an organized health promotion response to public health issues and
challenges.
Such infrastructures may be found through a diverse range of organizational structures, including
primary health care, government, private sector and nongovernmental organizations, self-help
organizations, as well as dedicated health promotion agencies and foundations. Although many
countries have a dedicated health promotion workforce, the greater human resource is to be found
among the wider health workforce, workforces in other sectors than health (for example in education,
social welfare and so on), and from the actions of lay persons within individual communities.
Infrastructure for health promotion can be found not only in tangible resources and structures, but also
through the extent of public and political awareness of health issues, and participation in action to
address those issues.
Scientific and lay explanation of disease causation and prevention

Lay concepts (or folk concepts) of health and illness are conceptual models used by individuals,
communities, or cultures in attempting to explain how to maintain health and to provide an explanation
for illness. Scientist determine if significant risk exists to disease exist and compares standards to
guidelines. As a strategy, health promotion takes into consideration the two explanations in order to
meet community perception and come up with a message that satisfies both the community and
scientific community.
Utilization of healthcare services
Access to healthcare is a large and diverse topic with a range of complex issues. The utilisation of
healthcare services, public or private, depends on socioeconomic factors, cultural beliefs and practices
and most importantly, the health system itself. Past research has evaluated inequalities in healthcare
access and quality across a wide range of different groups based on socio-economic status, ethnicity,
age, and gender.
Human behaviour and control of communicable diseases
Human behaviors determine outbreak trajectories of infectious diseases. Disease avoidance saves the
immune system from the costly process of reacting to the invasion of a pathogen. These behaviors
include reactions like disgust and avoidance of infectious hosts. Other individual behaviors linked to
epidemiological outcomes are correlated with exposure and infection. For example, higher social activity
is linked to an increased likelihood of influenza infection during outbreaks (3). At larger scales,
synchronized movements among susceptible individuals that increase population density and contacts
can drive population-wide disease outbreaks (4, 5). Human behaviors linked to active infections have
been more difficult to characterize. Asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic individuals can be central to
superspreading events because behaviors do not change during a period of infectiousness. For
symptomatic infections in humans, disease modelers and policy makers often assume that hosts have
fewer contacts or move less than healthy hosts (5), but data explicitly showing this phenomenon have
been limited.

Infrastructure For Health Promotion

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Infrastructure For Health Promotion

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Healthy public policy and advocacy

 Express their view and concerns;

Community development and social mobilization

Health education and behaviour change communication

Organizational change and capacity development

Sophisticated understandings of organizational dynamics and processes of organizational change are

Infrastructure for health promotion

Scientific and lay explanation of disease causation and prevention

Utilization of healthcare services

Human behaviour and control of communicable diseases

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