Health Promotion is based upon a social model of health concerned with “the process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health”, (Ottawa Charter, 1986).  This multidisciplinary field of practice was introduced by the World Health Organisation in 1984 as a comprehensive new approach to bringing about social changes for improved health at the population level. There was a growing awareness that health policy could not continue to be confined to increasingly expensive clinical and medical services as many of the key determinants of health lay outside the health care sector, in the wider social, economic and environmental influences on health.

Five key types of action were emphasised:

• Building healthy public policy
• Creating supportive environments for health
• Strengthening community action
• Developing personal skills
• Reorienting health services

Health promotion therefore, addresses non-medical factors influencing health, ranging from the modifiable behavioural factors including smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, nutrition and exercise through to the broader structural determinants - poverty, unemployment, housing, education, living and working conditions.  Health Promotion extends beyond the health services and influences primarily through the social settings where people live their lives, in homes, schools, workplaces and communities.

In seeking to improve population health, health promotion has a distinctive role to play, which is complementary to, but significantly different from, that undertaken by public health medicine.  Health Promotion moves beyond a disease prevention focus towards a more comprehensive holistic approach as represented by successful initiatives such as the international and European networks for Health-Promoting Schools, Health-Promoting Hospitals, Healthy Cities/Communities and workplace health promotion programmes.

Health promotion has the capacity not only to improve health but also to contribute to the reduction of other problems such as social inequity.  There is an accumulating evidence base demonstrating the feasibility of implementing low cost, effective health promotion programmes leading to long-term positive health and social gain.

Many of the key principles of Health Promotion including community participation, partnership, equity and social inclusion are already adopted in key national policy documents including Building Healthier Hearts (1999), the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (1997), Sustaining Progress (2003) and Quality and Fairness: A Health System For you (2001). Health Promotion, as a discipline and field of practice, offers a tried and tested approach for translating these key principles into practice, reaching beyond the traditional health services model to strategies of promoting health in the everyday settings that have meaning to people – homes, schools, workplaces and communities.   Health Promotion is to the forefront of the Quality and Fairness strategy strategy, with Goal Number 1 the achievement of ‘Better Health for Everyone’.  In addition, the practice and methods of contemporary health promotion would meet many of the broader objectives of the strategy.  Examples include community needs assessment, interagency partnerships and broadening the scope of primary care with a focus on social inclusion. The broader role of Health Promotion in facilitating a reorientation of the health services is crucial as is the ethos of health promotion in empowering individuals and communities.