The Ottawa Charter Highlights The Role Of Nurses In Promoting Health.

Health Promotion

Discuss about the Ottawa Charter and Role of Nurses.

The first international-health conference of Ottawa Charter given by WHO (1986) for health promotion has greatly influenced and guided the development of health promotional concept and shaped the public- health practice (Laverack, 2014). Ottawa Charter acts as a land-mark document by which it provides a basic action statement that creates resonance for nursing professionals continuously throughout the world. Ottawa Charter strategies and its action areas have stood as a test for nursing care, health- policy development as well as health- care research. Every health- care professional strives to provide optimal care to all the individuals irrespective of caste, creed, race and color. They work as a team to promote health at all the levels from urban to remote areas based on Ottawa Charter’s principles. As nurses are key front-line service providers, they have varied roles in promoting health based on various action areas of Ottawa Charter by considering health literacy as well as health education of people. The following essay will discuss how Ottawa Charter and its principles relate to the role of health- care professionals.

Health promotion is one of the essential components of public-health practice. Health promotion has been institutionalized and practiced since two decades. All the health practitioners, policy- framers, educators with community- researchers have recognized the importance of health promotional practices in promoting a country’s public- health (Potvin, 2011). Health promotion involves helping the individuals to develop control over and promote their health (Park, 2010). Health is viewed as a resource for human life but not as an objective for living. Hence, nurses should provide health- care to people beyond healthy life-style to attain a global well-being (Catford, 2011). The professional nurses should strive not only to prevent illness but also to promote health of a person (ANA, 2010).

According to Ottawa Charter, good health indicates presence of peace, home (shelter), education, adequate food and income, stabilized eco-system with sufficient resources; societal justice as well as equity. This shows that health promotion is not only the responsibility of nurses but also the responsibility of varied professionals. The health team has to work together to promote health by guiding people to identify the synergic aspects in-between their passions, motivate them and support them to change their lifestyle to achieve optimal health (O’Donnell, 2009). The health-professionals should understand that there is equilibrium between physical, psychological, societal, and spiritual with intellectual well-being. They should facilitate lifestyle modifications by combining their learning experiences to promote individual awareness, instill motivation and build skills along with creation of opportunities to promote accessibility to environments to enhance positive health-practices (O’Donnell, 2009).

Ottawa Charter Strategies and the Role of Health Professionals

Nurses help to transform the health of individuals, society and health-care system by promoting the health of individuals, families and communities (Ward, n. d.). The nurses should work based on three fundamental strategies for health- promotion proposed by Ottawa Charter. They include advocacy for health-care to develop fundamental conditions for health; enable all individual to attain their fullest health potential and mediate between varied societal interests in health pursuit. All the health professionals are totally responsibility for carrying out these strategies at all societal levels (Madanat, 2015).

The Ottawa Charter has given various action areas for health promotion. The health-care professionals should understand that only when these action areas are used collectively; it will provide better chance to promote health in any population setting (Hubley, 2013). This Charter has highlighted the role of health-care professionals, organizations, health-systems and communities with individualized behavior and capacity. While using Ottawa- Charter framework to deal with the determinants of illness, nurses gain an evidence-based and helpful framework to support individuals and communities to address health issues (Ward, n. d). Nurses can also utilize the Charter framework to frame and advice interventions to tackle health issues.

The first action-area of building healthy public-policy involves combining diverse as well as complementary practices in health promotional policy. Ottawa Charter makes the health-professionals to understand that health promotion extends beyond health- sector and health must be in the agenda of varied sectors and all governmental levels (Hubley, 2013). Nurses are accountable for advocating on-behalf of individuals and communities and in improving public- policy. The nurses should identify the obstacles in adopting healthy public-policies in health with non-health sectors and develop ways to eliminate those (Wills, 2014). According to ICN (2010), the nurses should promote advocacy, participate in framing health-policy and health-systems (Madanat, 2015). Such actions should be taken to help individuals to establish living environment that are conducive to healthy well-being and lifestyles. Thus, their objective should be to make the healthier choice as easier choice.

The second action-area of creating supportive-environment involves protecting people from health threats and enabling them to improve their capabilities and developing self-reliance in health. The public-policy should be developed to create supportive-environments through community partnerships. Nurses have a role in promoting interaction between people and local- government to exchange information, thoughts and ideas and identify strategies to solve health issues (Ward, n. d.). Nurses should protect individuals, communities and societies and provide opportunities for empowerment. Empowerment helps the individuals to gain control over decisions with actions affecting their health. Nurses should empower both individuals and communities to outlet their needs, concerns, design strategies and attain societal actions to meet their needs. Nurses should promote health by strengthening basic life-skills as well as physical environments that impacts health (Madanat, 2015).

Action Areas of Ottawa Charter and the Role of Nurses

The next action-area of strengthening community actions involves developing communities by helping the humans with other resources to promote self-help and societal support and to develop flexible systems to strengthen community participation (Madanat, 2015). The heart of this action involves community empowerment that involves persons working collectively to control over health-determinants and the quality of community life. Nurses should draw mechanisms for communities to help them in decision-making process. She should motivate the communities to identify their needs and strategies to meet these needs (Ward, n. d.). Nurses should emphasize that greater power remains with people themselves than that of professionals.

The fourth action-area of developing personal skills involves enabling persons to learn to empower themselves to manage chronic illnesses and injuries (Hubley, 2013). Nurses have to facilitate enabling in schools, home and community centers that refers to the action taken in partnerships with individuals and groups to empower them by mobilizing the resources to promote health. She should promote individual empowerment by helping individual in making decision and controlling life. The health professionals should act as a catalyst in promoting health action such as providing access to health information, facilitating skill-development with supporting accessibility to political-aspects to shape public-policies.

Next action-area of reorienting health services involves moving the health- sectors towards health promotional direction beyond its role of curative services (Madanat, 2015). Nurses have a greater role in promoting inter-sectoral collaboration between health- sector, community people and educational sector based on health issue. To reorienting health-services, health-professionals have to increase health research and bring changes in professional- education. Developing- personalized skills and strengthening community- actions could be taken as varied dimensions of health- education whereas reorienting health-services could be broadened to comprise schools, environmental aspects with societal aspects and building healthy-public policy with creating supportive-environments involves advocacy (Hubley, 2013).

Health education is an important aspect of health promotion that involves clearly designed opportunities for learning that are designed to promote health literacy that includes enhancing knowledge with promoting life-skills that are conducive to people’s health (Whitehead, 2008). Nurses should understand that health education is concerned with promoting motivation, skills with self-efficacy to take steps to promote health. Additionally, nurses should pay attention to health literacy and poverty-based barriers that prevents individual and community from practicing health- promotional activities (Jahan, 2012). The health-care professionals should promote health literacy by helping individual to achieve a level of knowledge, develop personal-skills and confidence to draw action to enhance health by modifying their life-styles and living conditions.

Thus, health promotion is one of the most important roles of health-care professionals. They have to go beyond regular clinical care to promote and protect health. Nurses should frame health promotional models to address health issues so as to promote health. The 5 action- areas of Ottawa Charter integrates various aspects of health promotion and the nurses should use all these areas collectively to serve as a useful tool in health promotion. Ottawa- Charter has given a framework for student nurses to determine their roles in public-health (Aarts, 2010). Nurses have to tackle issues in caring, holism as well as ecology to develop newer strategies for health promotion. A guiding principle could be framed to include both women and men in every phase of planning, implementing and evaluating health promotional activities. Health promotion is crucial in today’s world.

Reference

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