Health promotion (Oxford, England)最新文献

This paper is an outline of a proposed initiative on intersectoral collaboration in health promotion--collaboration between health, tourist, cultural and entertainment sectors to provide a powerful mass educational experience about the human mind and body. There has been a recent rise in interest in using the technology of museums, science centres, exploratories and theme parks for the promotion of health. This revival is shown to have a historical tradition in the health education museum started in this century in Europe 75 years ago at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum and then spreading to the USA. The proposed Body, Mind, City Museum planned for Liverpool acts as a future model for a new type of health Museum; a mixture of science exploratorium and a Walt Disney-style them park. It is intended that "hand-on" exhibits using interactive video, computers, games and experiences will be used to test people's own capacities or to describe biological functions or processes. This will be combined with park rides and simulations with their inherent appeal of fun, movement and surprise, for example the ride through the blood vessels and the "walk-through brain". This type of venture has a number of special features and advantages; it is truly intersectoral, it may be self-financing, and it can provide a mass audience with a powerful individual experience.

The range in the choice of viewing available to the British public by the end of the century could, and probably will, look much like that currently available to American viewers. This paper examines the implications to be drawn from American experience in determining future strategies for health promotion broadcasting in the UK. During a visit to the United States and Canada, sponsored by the King Edward's Hospital Fund for London, the author looked at the historical development and background to broadcasting services across North America and Canada, and at current policies and practice in broadcasting for the promotion of health. The first section provides an overview of the North American broadcasting systems, both the United States and Canada. The role of commercial interests is explored, particularly in relation to the existence and form of health promotion programming. The involvement of health professionals and community activists in the production of audio-visual material is discussed, particularly in the light of the competitive and pluralist nature of the television industry. The interests of the media professionals in promoting high audience ratings by attracting the attention of the public and holding it have their pros and cons for medical policy-makers. The shortcomings of the present situation in the United States where health and media professionals act not as educational partners but as business colleagues (so that viewers and patients are treated as consumers) forms a recurrent theme in the second section of the survey.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

In our preoccupation with developing professional health care services, we have lost sight of the contribution of lay people to their own health care. Indeed, health care has become synonymous with professional care. Recently, however, studies in Europe and North American suggest that the lay resource in health care constitutes at least 85% of all health care provided. As our knowledge of the world of lay health care expands, there is an emerging appreciation of multiple levels of lay self care, including behaviours relating to promotion, prevention, minor illnesses and injury treatment, chronic disease care, and rehabilitation. These activities appear to derive from an eclectic conceptual base that incorporates both allopathic and non-allopathic values, beliefs, and care-giving approaches. Furthermore, there is evidence of patterns of lay health care where care functions tend to be selectively distributed among discrete elements of the lay health care "system", comprised of individuals, the immediate family, the extended family, friends, mutual aid groups, lay voluntary organizations, and religious organizations. There remain, however, serious conceptual and methodological limitations in defining, observing, evaluating and interpreting the extent, quality and impact of the lay health resource. It is not, by and large, a regulated or officially sanctioned resource, so baseline data are not routinely available. Research methods useful in accounting for the lay system need further development and must be sensitive to often very subtle social and cultural aspects of lay health care. Many questions remain regarding demographic and social variations on the self-care theme.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The article describes the Italian experience of deinstitutionalization in psychiatry, a reform which has attracted international recognition as being the only instance of an industrial society eliminating detention in a mental hospital from its range of mental health agencies and services. The first part of the article highlights the differences between the Italian experience and psychiatric reforms in Europe and the US, where deinstitutionalization has been reduced to dehospitalization. The problems and failings of these reforms are examined. The second part describes the operation, very different in content and method from the above quoted experiences, of the Italian form of deinstitutionalization. Starting from a critique of the rationalistic problem-solution "paradign" in psychiatry, it has developed as a complex social process which: a) involves all its subjects as active participants, b) transforms the power relationship existing between the patient (and citizen) and the institution, c) creates mental health services which completely replace detention in mental hospitals by deconstructing them and reconverting the material and human resources found in them. An example of this reconversion is given in the way in which mental health services have been organized in Trieste. The fourth part examines the reform law arising from the deinstitutionalization process and the characteristics of its implementation, in order to show how this process continues through implementation. In the light of these considerations, deinstitutionalization is no longer perceived as an aspect of the "welfare crisis", but rather as a significant pointer to new-post-welfare social policies.