Creating a New Vision for Health promotion: Taking a Profession to a New Level of Effectiveness in Improving Health

摘要

Like changing health behavior, changing a health profession is a complex proposition. It starts with an assessment of present attitudes and practices and requires deliberate, realistic planning and goal setting with measurable results that guide future efforts at improvement. Social and behavior change agents suggest that the first step to affecting change is admitting there is a problem. What problem are we trying to address with a special journal issue on creating a new vision for health promotion? I would submit health promotion professionals need to confront three problems if we are to move from our relatively marginalized role in the American health system to that of being a profession that leads in improving the health of the nation. First, health promotion is severely underfunded. The trillion-plus dollar health industry is almost entirely focused on sick care at the expense of prevention. Second, health promotion is fragmented with uncoordinated, often incompatible subgroups in behavioral health, ecological health, and "wellness" or alternative health advocacy.