Health promoting hospital

Health promoting hospitals and health services orient their governance models, structures, processes and culture to optimise health gains of patients, staff and populations served and to support sustainable societies.

The concept of health promoting hospitals and health services was a response to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion action area ‘Reorienting health services’. The whole-of-system settings approach used by health promoting hospitals draws upon and consolidates several health reform movements: Patient or consumer rights; primary health care; quality improvement; environmentally sustainable (‘green’) health care and health literate organisations.

The organisational development strategy of health promoting hospitals involves re-orienting governance, policy, workforce capability, structures, culture and relationships towards improved health outcomes for patients, staff, and population groups in communities and other settings. Strategies and standards based on quality improvement philosophy and tools are used to guide action: on priority health and equity issues; to benefit specific groups of patients, such as children and adolescents, aged people, people with mental health conditions, and migrants; on prevention and promotion themes such as smoking, nutrition, physical activity and alcohol consumption; and for environmental sustainability.

As defined in the World Health Organisation "Health Promotion Glossary of Terms 2021"

Health promotion is defined by WHO as being the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health. Health promotion represents a comprehensive social and political process. It not only embraces actions directed at strengthening the skills and capabilities of individuals, but also action directed towards changing social, environmental and economic determinants of health so as to optimise their positive impact on public and personal health. Health promotion is the process of enabling people, individually and collectively, to increase control over the determinants of health and thereby improve their health.

The Ottawa Charter identifies three basic strategies for health promotion. These are advocacy for health to create the essential conditions for health indicated above; enabling all people to achieve their full health potential; and mediating between the different interests in society in the pursuit of health. The Ottawa Charter identified five priority action areas: to build healthy public policy; create supportive environments for health; strengthen community action for health; develop personal skills; and re-orient health services.

These action areas remain vitally important in health promotion, and the underlying concepts have continued to evolve. Some of these actions – such as re-orienting health services and community action for health – remain but are represented with updated definitions. Others remain in the main body of the glossary but have evolved into different terms. For example, the concept of healthy public policy remains independently valid, but is now included within the contemporary concept of health in all policies. Similarly, developing personal skills is incorporated into definitions of skills for health and health literacy.

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[edit] External links

Budapest Declaration on health promoting hospitals. Budapest: Health Promoting Hospitals Network; 1991 (https:// www.hphnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Budapest-Declaration.pdf, accessed 8 July 2021