Promoting Positive Outcomes for Individuals and Communities
What you must understand
Health promotion uses the Ottawa Charter actions: build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community action, develop personal skills and reorient health services. Candidates should know prevention levels - primary (prevent onset), secondary (early detection), tertiary (reduce harm and support rehabilitation) - and be able to classify a program correctly.
Understand health literacy, empowerment, community participation and capacity building. Programs should be evidence-based, evaluated and sustainable. Behaviour-change models (e.g. stages of change, social cognitive theory) help explain why information alone rarely changes behaviour.
Traps in questions
- Calling a screening program “primary prevention” - screening is usually secondary.
- Assuming awareness campaigns equal behaviour change; address environment, cost and social norms.
- Ignoring evaluation: a strong answer names indicators (reach, uptake, outcomes, equity).
- Victim blaming: focus on enabling environments, not just individual willpower.
Rule of thumb
For any program, ask: Who is it for? Which prevention level? Which Ottawa action? Is it accessible and culturally safe? How will success be measured?
Worked example
Question: Evaluate a school healthy-eating initiative. Strong answer: “It develops personal skills (education) and creates a supportive environment (canteen policy). Success depends on affordability, student voice, family involvement and whether outcomes such as fruit consumption are measured - otherwise it risks being tokenistic.”