Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion: Principles & Strategies

Posted on Apr 4, 2025 in Geography

Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986)

Health promotion is the process of empowering people to increase control over their own health and improve it.

Health promotion focuses on healthy people and involves educating every person.

  • Health promotion empowers people to care for their health. Prevention is paramount, including primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.
  • Health promotion emphasizes primary prevention.
  • Example: A diabetic patient being taught how to administer insulin is an example of secondary prevention because the individual is already ill.

Requirements for Health Promotion

The following are essential requirements for health:

  • Peace
  • Shelter
  • Education
  • Food
  • Income
  • A stable ecosystem
  • Sustainable resources
  • Justice
  • Social equity

Without these, adequate healthcare cannot be achieved.

Scope of Health Promotion

To promote health, improvements should be made in the following areas:

  • Establish Healthy Public Policy: Governments should prioritize health promotion in their policies, avoiding conflicts of interest (e.g., tobacco companies influencing health policy).
  • Create Supportive Environments: Foster environments that support health (e.g., natural environments, living spaces). Examples include caring for forests and seas, and implementing Healthy City Projects.
  • Strengthen Community Action: Empower communities to take action on health issues.
  • Develop Personal Skills: Enhance individuals’ knowledge and skills related to health.
  • Reorient Health Services: Shift the focus of health services to promote health, not just diagnose and treat patients.

Healthy Cities Project (1986)

Key considerations for Healthy Cities Projects include:

  • Demography
  • Quality of the physical environment, including pollution levels
  • Quality of infrastructure and housing
  • State of the economy, including unemployment levels
  • Quality of the social environment
  • Personal safety
  • Aesthetics of the environment and overall quality of life

51st World Health Assembly (WHO, May 1998)

The World Health Declaration outlines goals for Health for All in the 21st Century, including:

  • Increased equity in health
  • Improving survival and quality of life
  • Reversing global trends of major pandemics
  • Eradicating and eliminating certain diseases
  • Improving access to water, sanitation, and housing
  • Promoting healthy lifestyles and reducing harmful behaviors
  • Developing, implementing, and monitoring national health policies
  • Improving access to essential, comprehensive, and high-quality health care
  • Implementing national and global health information and surveillance systems
  • Supporting health research

Health 21 (European Region)

Health 21 implements these goals for the European region, with 21 objectives for the 21st century.

  • PERMANENT PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE: To enable all people to reach their full health potential.
  • TWO MAJOR GOALS:
    • To promote and protect the health of people throughout their lives.
    • To reduce the incidence of major diseases and injuries and the suffering they cause.
  • THREE CORE VALUES:
    • Health as a fundamental human right.
    • Equity in health and solidarity of action among all countries, within countries, and between their inhabitants.
    • The participation and responsibility of individuals, groups, institutions, and communities in the ongoing development of health.

Summary: Four Key Action Strategies

  • Multisectoral strategies
  • Programs and investments aimed at developing health and healthcare
  • Primary health care
  • A process of participatory health development

Health 21 (21 Aims)

  1. Solidarity for health in the European Region
  2. Equity in health
  3. Start healthy life
  4. The health of young people
  5. Aging in good health
  6. To improve mental health
  7. To reduce communicable diseases
  8. To reduce noncommunicable diseases
  9. To reduce injuries from violence and accidents
  10. A safe and healthy physical environment
  11. A healthier lifestyle
  12. Reducing the harm caused by alcohol, drugs, and tobacco
  13. Health Scenarios
  14. Sectoral responsibility for health
  15. An integrated health sector
  16. Evidence-based management in the quality of healthcare
  17. Funding for health services and resource allocation
  18. Developing human resources for health
  19. Research and knowledge for health
  20. Mobilizing agents for health
  21. Policies and strategies for health for all