Global Health Promotion and Wellness

Difference between health promotion and wellness

Health promotion is the strategy adopted by relevant agencies to make a community free of diseases. Reflectively, health promotion encompasses the state of an individual in relation to diseases. On the other hand, wellness encompasses different strategies that are applied to ensure that an individual has a healthy lifestyle (Lundy & Janes 2009).

Basically, wellness promotion endeavors to create a sustainable balance in the mental, intellectual, environmental, and physical elements of health. For instance, the promotion of healthy eating habits and behavioral elements such as non-smoking are examples of wellness promotion programs. However, “health promotion is broader and deals with dysfunction in addition to prevention of disease” (Lundy & Janes 2009, p. 42).

Applying levels of prevention to health promotion and wellness

Preventive medicine

Preventive medicine focuses on the element of the prevention of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and infectious diseases in order to promote a balanced state of health (McKenzie, Neiger & Thackeray 2009). As a result, the health promotion programs will result in the wellness of the target population.

Screening

Through screening, the health promotion and wellness programs will ensure that diseases that have been prevented do not reoccur (McKenzie, Neiger & Thackeray 2009). This process enables health agents to design intervention strategies before the spread of diseases becomes uncontrollable.

Health education and how does it differs in community settings

Health education refers to the occupation of offering educational services to a community on issues related to health and well-being. Among the main areas included in health education are social health, environmental health, intellectual health, and physical health among others. Health education promotes positive behavior for the restoration and maintenance of health. According to World Health Organization (1998), health education encompasses “consciously constructed opportunities for learning… designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge, and developing life skills which are conducive to individual and community health” (World Health Organization 1998, p. 11).

Health education differs in different community settings because of the unique needs for knowledge and skills, interventions strategies and health policies. Besides, different curriculum and professional grading systems are applied in communities. For instance, the health education curriculum in Romania is different from that of the United States since its priority was to address the recommendations of the UN agencies.

Global health and its effects on the international health

Global health addresses health concerns that have global economic and political impacts and transcend territorial boarders of individual countries. Global health summarizes the research, study and practice that prioritise worldwide health improvement through policies that are designed to protect the globe from health threats. For instance, the fight against HIV and other contagious diseases have become a global concern in the last three decades. Specifically, HIV has been declared a global epidemic by the World Health Organization (World Health Organization 1998, p. 14). At present, the major continental blocks have allocated funds to the World Health Organization to ensure that treatment and preventive care for HIV related illnesses are affordable across the globe.

Global health has positively affected the international health through reduction of cost of preventive and other healthcare services. For instance, through global health organisations, HIV drugs and preventive care has been made affordable and accessible to mankind. As a matter of fact, even people in poor countries such as Haiti and Zimbabwe have an access to affordable HIV treatment and care services (World Health Organization 1998, p. 17).

References

Lundy, K. S., & Janes, S. (2009). Community Health Nursing: Caring for the Public’s Health (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

McKenzie, J., Neiger, B., Thackeray, R. (2009). Planning, Implementing, & Evaluating Health Promotion Programs (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pearson Education, Inc.

World Health Organization. (1998). Health Promotion Glossary. Web.