HEALTH PROMOTION FOR ETHNIC MINORITY

Health Promotion for Ethnic Minority



Health Promotion for Ethnic Minority

Introduction

Health promotion is defined as the process of enabling individuals to increase control over their health and to improve their quality of well-being by engaging in a socially, physically, and spiritually fulfilling life. This definition applies to people with and without disabilities. The process of achieving good health depends on the synergy of personal engagement and commitment, and a supportive environment that includes ample opportunities for maintaining and improving health.

Health promotion is whether it is viewed as an umbrella that covers the activities of a range of disciplines committed to improving the health of the population, or as a discipline in its own right. Recent changes in the knowledge base and the practice of health promotion are characteristic of paradigmatic and disciplinary development. They take a discipline to involve an ordered field of study embracing associated theories, perspectives and methods. A discipline would be expected to have its own ideology that would also inform standards of professional practice.

A researcher described that there are four tasks of medicine are promotion of health, prevention of illness, restoration and rehabilitation of the sick. It was not until the late 1970s that this term began to be applied in a more specific way to a concept, movement, and discipline and, indeed profession. It has been noted that the roots of contemporary health promotion are in health education.

Two broad paths can be traced in the subsequent development of health education. First, the preventive approach, sought even more sophisticated ways of achieving behaviour change by means of the application of psychological theory. Second, the educational approach, was more in tune with progressive educational philosophy, was concerned with enabling people to make informed choices. The emergence of health promotion was in response to the need to address the environmental as well as, the behavioural determinants of health. In effect, a shift was marked that was concerned with healthy choices to make the healthy choice the easy choice.

Health promotion includes efforts to tackle the social and environmental determinants of health by means of healthy public policy. The scope of health promotion can therefore, be summed up in a simple formula.

Health Promotion = Health Education * Health Public Policy

Discussion

There are various approaches to health promotion with ethnic minority communities. The approaches taken to health education within minority ethnic communities are intrinsically linked to the social policy framework from which they grew. The assimilationist, integrationist and anti-racist frameworks, explore the health education approaches built upon each of these ideological perspectives (Roysircar, 2003, 27).

Assimilation

The economic boom following the Second World War and the resultant labour shortage brought about a major influx of immigrants from the New Commonwealth. The predominant view was that assimilation of these groups was desirable. The focus of discussion on health matters relating to ethnic minority groups at this time was on exotic diseases and cultural differences. The philosophy was that individuals coming to live in Britain should adhere to the British ...