Community Health Promotion and Prevention

Approaches

Salutogenesis aims to identify people’s resources, both internal and external (proximal and distal), that are conducive to the production, maintenance and enhancement of health and that thus contribute to improve wellness and quality of life (Lindtström & Eriksson, 2010). In this regard, the CHPP LAB operates according to the principles of health promotion advocated by the WHO and defined in the Ottawa Charter (1986).

Nevertheless, working to promote the health of both individuals and the population also means intervening preventatively in order to identify and target individual and environmental risk factors.

In this case, the CHPP LAB opts for a pathogenic approach in its teaching, research and service provision activities. The focus here, instead, is on what produces diseases, accidents or death, and interventions are predicated on the principles of primary prevention.

Health promotion and primary prevention are complementary and often overlap.

Efforts to improve the health, wellness and quality of life of the population are best served by the synthesis and synergy of these approaches. The care models that we apply are marked by this synthesis and synergy.

Practice settings concerned

The practice settings concerned by the CHPP LAB’s teaching, research and service provision activities are essentially the following:

What needs to be done in these places is to take action with individuals, families and/or communities in order to produce, maintain and enhance health and to prevent diseases or accidents. It is to this end that the members of the CHPP LAB put their competencies at the service of the populations concerned and of the (future) professionals that practise in these settings.

Team

Current research topics

Bachelor’s thesis topics

The topics that we propose to BSN students regard nursing activities geared to promoting health and preventing disease or accidents in the following populations:

Partners