Explains how the tools of health promotion can be used to encourage community action for health, foster healthy lifestyles, and create conditions conducive to good health, even when resources ae severely limited. Addressed to policy-makers and planners, the book serves as both a call for intensified action and a rich source book of practical methods for tackling a range of problems. The book has four chapters. The first reviews the evolution of health promotion as a strategy, in line with the principles of primary health care, for reaching disadvantaged and under-served populations and for giving people greater control over conditions affecting their health. Pertinent facts and figures are used to indicate the magnitude of preventable deaths and disease and the corresponding need to intensify health promotion. Chapter two explains the aims of health promotion and outlines three strategies for action. These involve advocacy for public policies that support health, empowerment of people to make decisions for health, and social support for health. The third chapter, which constitutes the core of the book, presents and discusses over 50 case studies of health promotion activities in different parts of the world. Organized to reflect the three strategies introduced in chapter two, these case studies illustrate successful approaches ranging from the training of "little doctors" to the use of land-sharing schemes to upgrade urban slums, from earn-while-you-learn programmes for improved literacy to the use of comic magazines to promote hygiene in schools. For each group of case studies, the authors provide a useful discussion of factors that helped determine the appropriateness and effectiveness of the various approaches. The final chapter outlines challenges for future action.

DC.HQ

eng fre spa.

tha.

WHODOC

WHO monograph

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