WHO SEARO
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Health promotion

    Overview

    “Health Promotion: Sustainable Prevention is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health.” 

    To reach a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment.

    Health promotion is not just the responsible of health sector, but goes beyond healthy life-styles to well-being.” (Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986).

    Health Promotion in Sustainable Development Goals

    9th Global conference on health promotion: Global leaders agree to promote health in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals

    Health Promotion Strategies

    Advocacy for Health is a combination of individual and social actions designed to gain political commitment, policy support, social acceptance and systems support for a particular health goal or programme. Advocacy is one of the three major strategies for health promotion and can take many forms including the use of the mass media and multi-media, direct political lobbying, and community mobilization through, for example, coalitions of interest around defined issues. Health professionals have a major responsibility to act as advocates for health at all levels in society.

    Mediation: In health promotion, a process through which the different interests (personal, social, economic) of individuals and communities, and different sectors (public and private) are reconciled in ways that promote and protect health.  Producing change in people’s lifestyles and living conditions inevitably produces conflicts between the different sectors and interests in a population. Such conflicts may arise, for example, from concerns about access to, use and distribution of resources, or constraints

    on individual or organizational practices. Reconciling such conflicts in ways which promote health may require considerable input from health promotion practitioners, including the application of skills in advocacy for health.

    Enabling: In health promotion, enabling means taking action in partnership with individuals or groups to empower them, through the mobilization of human and material resources, to promote and protect their health.

    (Reference: Report of the Inter-Agency Meeting on Advocacy Strategies for Health and Development: Development Communication in Action. WHO, Geneva, 1995)

    From Ottawa Charter 1986 to Helsinki Statement 2013

    Bhutan Country Experience - National Health Promotion Strategic Plan 2015-2023

    Health for all and all for health

    Healthy settings

    Latest publications

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    Enhancing urban governance for health and well-being in South-East Asian cities: Regional laboratory, framework, cases and assessment tool

    This document is developed by the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia in collaboration with the Regional Social Laboratory on urban governance for...

    Global report on urban health: equitable healthier cities for sustainable development

    We are at an unprecedented moment in human development as the greatest migration in history unfolds around us. Less than a decade ago a majority of humankind...

    Optimizing health literacy: Improving health and reducing health inequities

    This series of information sheets introduces health literacy, its relevance to public policy, and the ways it can be used to inform the promotion of...

    Health literacy toolkit for low- and middle-income countries

    This series of information sheets introduces health literacy, its relevance to public policy, and the ways it can be used to inform the promotion of good...

    Meeting Reports

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    Regional Meeting with Multisectoral Partners on Urban Governance for Health and Well-being in South-East Asia Region

    The Regional Meeting with Multisectoral Partners on Urban Governance for Health and Well-being on 27- 29 September 2022, brought together over one hundred...

    Development of city health profiles and healthy city plan: regional workshop report

    According to the World Urbanization Prospect 2018 of UN Population Division1 , WHO South-East Asia countries is hosting 750 million urban population with...

    Inter-ministerial Meeting to revitalize Health Promoting Schools in South-East Asia Region

    In 2019 WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, and inter-agency partners worked together to transform fragmented school health services to generate better system and structures...

    Capacity-building on leadership for health promotion

    Over 25 years after the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, many countries have developed health promotion policies, strategies and programmes. Various...

    Cover Page image of a meeting report

    The webinar was graced by Acting Director of Family, Gender and Life-Course Department in WHO-SEARO, Dr Neena Raina, highlighting important of regional...

    Cover Page image of a meeting report

    A critical mass of leaders in health promotion, applying their knowledge and skills, focusing on their local conditions, developing projects attuned to...

    Videos

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