Health Promotion Practice

Power and Empowerment

'This book, written from an international perspective and thus eminently readable by a wider audience, draws on the author's considerable experience and is amply supplied with a good range of illustrations from real-life practice…The logical structure and accessible style makes this a useful addition to the personal library of anyone who has an interest in "bottom-up" empowerment-based approaches to health promotion' - RCN Research Headlines

'The author draws on a wealth of personal experiences in the field, giving the book both readability and credibility. Good examples from different international contexts, illustrated in relevant case studies, let the reader relate theory to practice and bring the concepts to life. The author takes the central thrust of health promotion for the past few decades and unravels it for the reader in a clear, comprehensive way' - Health Matters

In health promotion, the concept of power can be defined as the ability to create or resist change, and this is an important foundation for individual and community health. By enabling people to empower themselves, health promoters can provide the capacity for the individual or community to change their lives and their living conditions, and therefore their health. Health Promotion Practice explores the issue of how such an approach to health promotion practice can improve a community's success towards achieving healthier conditions through its own actions.

Placing empowerment at the heart of health promotion practice, and offering advice for health promoters who accept the challenge to work in such a way, Health Promotion Practice defines key concepts of health, health promotion and community empowerment. It also:

Introduces readers to a 'social' model of health promotion practice, one that attempts to get at the underlying social determinants of disease;

Helps readers understand the importance of power relations and their transformation in this practice;

Introduces readers to a new `community capacity-building' approach to plan,

implement and evaluate health promotion programmes.

Health Promotion Practice is an invaluable resource to students and practitioners of health promotion who want to help empower the communities that they work with.