This text is intended to introduce the philosophy and content of health
promotion to a variety of people. While primarily aimed at people who
come from a health and/or medical (note that I differentiate!) background,
the subject is of wide and increasing importance in the whole context of
rapidly changing social and political values. Therefore, this offering is also
intended to engage the thought and attention of a broad spectrum of
socially-aware readers.
A number of attributes of health promotion immediately become clear
even to a casual reader. For instance, health promotion is not the same thing
as health education; medicine is an intrinsically politicalactivity and not the
‘neutral and dispassionate clinical science’ that some are wont to think it is.
Health promotion, if it is to define its scope of action rationally, must
clearly delineate its relationship with clinical science and health education
and this, apparently, cannot be done without some consideration of its
social and political implications. But this, in turn, brings in issues related to
ethics and philosophy. Indeed, it requires a fair degree of scholarly rigour to
prevent a theory of health promotion from becoming that much sought
after philosophers’ stone, a Theory of Everything’! In a sense, of course,
such a breadth is legitimate, for once we concern ourselves with problems of
‘empowerment’ and ‘self-esteem’, ‘neighbourhood advocacy’ and
‘intersectorality’, ‘politics’ and ‘gender issues’, etc., the whole gamut of the
intellectual enterprise provides a legitimate avenue for enquiry. It would not
be hard, for instance, to research a commentary on the link between
Beethoven’s Requiem Massand the ‘Concept of Autonomy’!