Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

258 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
Also known as “ community health promotion, ” the new health promotion movement
has given birth to a new group of experts with new knowledge bases, new language,
and new skills. Like many social movements, it has come to represent the
emergence of a new domain of knowledge and discourse (Foucault, 1977). The new
health promotion movement has emerged largely by challenging the truth claims — the
building blocks of any knowledge domain — of more traditional health education and
health promotion approaches. Some of the prominent features of this new health promotion
movement include the following:
1. Broadening the definition of health and its determinants to include the social
and economic context within which health — or, more precisely, non - health — is
produced
2. Going beyond the earlier emphasis on individual lifestyle strategies to achieve
health to broader social and political strategies
3. Embracing the concept of empowerment — individual and collective — as a key
health promotion strategy
4. Advocating the participation of the community in identifying health problems
and strategies for addressing those problems
Although some practitioners of the earlier, more traditional approach to health
promotion had attempted to employ one or more of these features, the new health promotion
movement goes considerably further to consolidate them into a coherent,
clearly articulated theory and approach to practice.
The new health promotion movement is to be applauded for having moved the field
beyond the narrow confines of the earlier individual lifestyle approach. Nevertheless, in
the spirit of Becker ’ s paper (1986), we argue that critical self - reflection with respect
to the terms and concepts used to articulate this new health promotion is needed, if we
are to avoid simply substituting one tyranny for another. We suggest that, for the revolution
in health promotion to be more than a revolution in professional discourse, critical
examination of the new knowledge domain represented by the new health promotion is
needed.
The paper is offered as a contribution to the continuing development and refinement
of theory, research, and practice related to the concept of empowerment. To that
end, we shall explore, in turn, the multidimensional and contested nature of health,
empowerment, and community participation. We begin with a brief general discussion
of what we mean, in the context of this paper, by multidimensional and contested.
CONTESTED DOMAINS
The new health promotion movement is punctuated by words like empowerment and
community participation . But what do these words mean and do they mean the same to
all who use them? To invoke these words is to invoke powerful symbolic concepts.