RHP&EO is the electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education

Teaching Health Promotion - A Feasible Strategy For The Development Of Supportive Environments

Bo J A Haglund(1), Bosse Pettersson(2), Per Tillgren(1), Bjarne Jansson(1)

1) Karolinska Institute, Dept Center, S-172 83 Sundbyberg, Sweden.
2) The National Public Health Institute. S-104 10 Stockholm, Sweden.

ABSTRACT

In the effort to move health promotion into the 21th century, public health education has to be re-oriented towards health promotion rather than disease prevention. In recent years there has been some criticism of the lack of post-graduate education and training for public health in this respect, especially of the lack of integration between theory and practice. The aim of the Masters curriculum at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden presented here is not only to equip participants with technical competence but to initiate public health activities.

For the students the learning objectives are to acquire a sound theoretical basis for health promotion work, to learn about practical methods for developing supportive environments, and to gain experience of using these methods within the framework of the course.

Instead of a traditional disease or risk factor-based approach, the focus is on potential settings for intervention such as education, work, transport and energy, housing and physical environments, food and agriculture, and social support.

The course consists of two teaching periods of a forthnight each, usually separated by six to eight weeks. During the teaching periods more than half the time is spent on group-oriented work. In the intervening period the participants continue to work on group tasks, testing their ideas on local decision makers. The final stage of the second forthnight involves participants presenting their programmes to teaching staff who judge their theoretical content and to the local decision makers who judge their feasibility. Some programmes initiated as a result of attendance are still active four years later.

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