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

Health Promotion In The Workplace

Jan Winroth, Lecturer, B.A., Doctoral student

Vanersborg University College of Health and Caring Sciences, Vanersborg, Sweden.

My dissertation deals with "Aims and strategies in health work", focusing on the perspective of salutogenesis and promotive health work. The theoretical frame of reference discusses a.o. health from a historical and cultural perspective, a survey of the concept of health and meta-theoretical perspective of health. The first definition dealt with the concept of health and the choice of perspectives. The second definition is concerned with the choice of arena. I will concentrate on the perspectives of organizations and enterprises since these lend themselves well to promotive health work. The empirical part is divided into two sub-studies. The first one evaluates a one-year health promotion project in the enterprise NCC. The study is an evaluation and the design is measurement before and after where qualitative as well as. quantitative methods have been used. This study has been accomplished and documented. It pictures a traditional way of working with health promotion in an enterprise. The second study aims at creating an image of what is meant by health in the workplace and is done in combination with a project in Vara municipality. The background is a pilot project -"Project Vedum" carried out in 1992-1993, where the aim was to collect experience of how to work in the best possible way with development of work organizer, working teams and health promotion in a municipal organization. The result led to a project called "Developing Vara" which was a full-scale project involving all of the municipal organization and financed mainly by money from Working Life Fund. Important parts have been training of coaches and of health promotion inspirers and team work development. The result unit has served as the organizational starting-point. The last part of this project which has been going on in 1994-1995 has been a two day education called "Workplace Health Promotion". The coaches together with the health promotion inspirers of each unit have been given the possibilities of discussing together how they want to work with health issues in their workplace. What I want to study in this project i how this work comes forward and what experiences those involved have of "Workplace Health Promotion". In this context I want to present the result from the NCC study and also the design planned for the Vara study. I will also discuss the workplace as an arena for promotive health work.

Internet Explorer 5.0 or later version gives the optimal visual effect of this website.