Health Promotion has practical focus on health and well being

Health Promotion has practical focus on health and well being. A main feature of the discipline is its recognition that health is more than individual physical and mental well-being or fitness, but incorporates overall social factors such as the degree of equality and social support. The concept of health is very complex, therefore health promotion draws upon many different strategies and disciplines to improve the health of individuals and communities and the population on the whole, these may include sociology, social psychology, education and communication, economics, ethics and epidemiology (Bunton and MacDonald, 1992). The concept of health promotion is exceptionally broad and appears to include any attempt to improve health. The term was first introduced in 1974 by the Canadian Minister of Health, Marc Lalonde, who suggested that there where different elements that contributed to the public's health. (Marc Lalonde 1974) believed these to be, human biology (genetics and hereditary factors), lifestyle (personal behaviours that may contribute to health or illness, for example those related to exercise and diet), environment (including both physical and social environment in which people lived and worked), health care organisation (the quality and availability of health services). The main and most radical feature of this report was the belief that an improvement in health would come not from a greater expenditure on health services for those who are sick but from a "new perspective" that directed money to prevention. The arguments for this new approach were compelling. In the developed world it was apparent that technological medicine and hospital-based services were not reducing the burden of ill health. Major causes of mortality in developed countries are non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness, whose cause can be attributed to behaviours such as smoking and nutrition. There is a growing elderly population, which is associated with an increased demand for care, although older people remain independent and living in the community. Curative medicine involves escalating costs with no guarantee of effectiveness along with the fact that people's expectations of health services outstrip capacity.