Reducing Alcohol Misuse in Youths: Strategies from the Ottawa Charter

This essay discusses the Ottawa Charter's five-action plan to reduce alcohol misuse in youths. Nurses can play a key role in educating and guiding young people towards healthier habits. The essay also emphasizes the importance of community and parental involvement in promoting health awareness among youths.

Running Head: Primary Health Care
Primary Health Care
Essay
System04104
9/25/2018

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Introduction
The first international conference on ‘Health Promotion’ organized by the WHO
(World Health Organisation) in Ottawa, Canada in November 1986, called ‘Ottawa Charter
for Health Promotion’ (World Health Organisation, 2018). The main objective of this charter
is “health for all” by the year 2000 and after this a better health promotion of human beings.
The charter stressed the importance of a socio-environmental approach to achieve better
health for people. As the Ottawa charter focuses on health promotion and people has become
more conscious about their health and more aware of the relationship between their lifestyle
and illness, people begin to adopt various health promotion habits. People adopt various
health promotional habits such as maintaining appropriate food nutrition, getting more
conscious about their physical fitness, controlling, and avoiding the use of alcohol, tobacco,
and other drugs (Ward & Verrinder, 2008). Nurses play a key role in health promotion in
order to promote health awareness among people and prevent illness.
Misuse of Alcohol among Youths
For many people in our country, Alcohol consumption is an enjoyable part of daily
life. However, it has been seen in the recent past in many surveys that alcohol consumption in
youths has been increasing tremendously. It has been seen that the proportion of alcohol
consumption and their quantity of alcohol drinking is at record levels. The bad habits of
alcohol consumption in youngsters result in negative physical health and several types of
mental and physical diseases. The immediate harms of excessive alcohol consumptions are
road accidents, high-risk sexual activity, injuries, murder, and other crimes. Use of Alcohol in
16-24 years old age people is increasing day by day and that causes arising of numerous
dangerous disease and injury burden on youths (Burns, 2017). There are numbers of countries
that effectively reduce the consumption of alcohol by youths by implementing strict rule and
regulations in the country. The support of community also plays an important role in
implementing and proposes such changes that reduce the alcohol consumption in youths
instead of focusing more on current alcohol prohibition laws. The Parents of youngster also
play an important role in influencing the attitude and belief of youth to avoid the alcohol
consumption. However, guardian of these youth people has indicated that they need
information, skills, and social support to guide the youngsters towards avoiding the use of
alcohol or safe use of alcohol. The five strategic action plan of the Ottawa charter provides a

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framework for nurses to support parents to promote health among people and support safe
alcohol drinking habits in youths of the country. By using five actions plan of Ottawa charter
on parents and community, nurses can successfully and effectively addressing the alcohol
misuse of youths and guide them to reduce their alcohol consumptions that cause various
dangerous disease (Linsley, Kane, & Owen, 2011).
5 Strategies of Ottawa Charter Plan to stop misuse of Alcohol in youths
The Ottawa Charter plan focuses on five-action plan to promote health promotion
among people (McMurray & Clendon, 2015). Nurses can use this five-action plan to stop
misuse of alcohol consumption in youths. These actions are as follow:
1. Build Healthy Public policy
A healthy public policy is a key solution to improving the health of people. The
government should examine its all the public policy and its impact on the health of people. If
the government or any authorised body find that a particular health policy is ineffective then
the policy should be changed or amend to ensure its effectiveness on people’s health.
However, if these strategies and policies are effective and appropriate at the individual level
then it helps very little in reducing the burden of disease at the societal level (Hutton, Cusack,
& Zannettino, 2012). Society plays an important role in reducing the alcohol-related disease
and harm. Regulation and restrictions on the sale of alcohol products and impose heavy taxes
on alcohol and focusing on lower blood alcohol limits some is the major area where both
central and local government can focus in order to reduce the alcohol-related harm (Fyffe,
2009). Nurses can directly with public and community with various government programs
through spreading awareness among people about alcohol-related disease and harms. Nurses
can play a key role in persuading youths, his/her families, and the society on behalf of their
clients that how they can avoid alcohol and can promote effective health policy.
2. Create Supportive Environments
A strong and effective health policy can reduce the misuse of alcohol by youths.
Alcohol consumption not only causes disease for youths, rather it affects the health of all
members of a society who consume alcohol. A healthy public policy related to alcohol
consumption assists in creating a supporting health environment that ensures a healthy,
enjoyable, safe, and secure life to all people in a community (Harris, Chan, Laws, Williams,
Davies, Jayasinghe, & Milat, 2013). Alcohol misuse causes a large number of road accidents

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and sexual crimes that is why here ‘safe’ needs to be reconsidered. Public policy designed to
create a supportive environment has resulted in a quality approach towards the health
promotion, where working for change occurs through partnership at the social level. The
nurses can play a key role in interaction between schoolteachers and parents of youths, or
between school authorities and local government bodies, so they can exchange information,
ideas, strategies, policies, and required actions that will help in reducing the consumption of
alcohol in order to reduce the unnecessary alcohol-related harms (Marry & Flynn, 2015).
Nurses can also help in creating a plan on the ground basis in cooperation with the
community that will help in reducing the alcohol consumption and improve the health of
youths.
3. Strengthen Community Action
The role of community is so important in the mission against the reduction of alcohol
use in youths. Thus, strengthen community action is the vital factor in decision-making to
reduce the misuse of alcohol consumption. The community is self-responsible for their
progress, and for this, they should determine what their needs and how they can best meet
their needs effectively. A community has a great power of influencing people as the whole tat
how they can promote their health and restrict themselves against the unethical and
dangerous habits such as alcohol consumption. A strong plan of community is one of the
greatest ways to achieve such an objective of promoting healthcare in people (Lee, 2015).
There are numbers of examples of community activities that have focused on reducing
alcohol use in the society and reduce the harm related to alcohol consumption. The role of
nurses in this strategy is to organize young peoples to involve in the decision-making process
that adversely affects their health and wellbeing.
4. Develop Personal Skills
Develop personal skills is a necessary factor when people are more in control of their
lives and have more power of decision making to transform them into a better person. Nurses
can serve here as an influencer to motivate people to think about their selves and about their
health (Roden, Jarvis, Campbell-Crofts, & Whitehead, 2015). People having good knowledge
about their selves and have a necessity to change their bad habits, need to develop personal
skills that help in protect them from such types of alcohol disease and danger. In many
houses, it has been observed that parents hesitate to talk about alcoholism and its harmful
effect on the body, to their young son/daughters. It is also clear that many people themselves

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powerless or clueless in their home to do anything to stop their young child to use
alcoholism. In this case, a nurse can work as an educator who can provide formal and
informal education to the youth or adolescent in coordination with parents and school
teachers (Fernandez, 2015). Nurses can also educate and influence them about the various
policies that help in the reduction of alcoholic products usage and their harm to their body.
5. Reorient Health Services
Reorienting health care is an essential thing that ensures everyone that health
promotion is necessary for everyone and it should be involved in people’s daily activities (Li,
Babor, Zeigler, Xuan, Morisky, Hovell, & Li, 2015). Re-orientating health care services
mean that nurses have a key role in the development of collaboration among various sectors
of society such as the parents, adolescents, youths, police, health sector, and education sector.
A brief interference of parents, educators, and community member always is helpful to
protect youngsters from the harmful disease that arises because of excessive use of alcohol
(Grovier & Rees, 2013). However, it has been observed that it is very tough to mentor and
guide youngsters to avoid the use of alcohol as there are numbers of medical practitioners and
experts are not comfortable or skilled while they working with young people. Nurses can play
a role of an intervener in coordination with parents and medical experts to influence and
guide younger people about their health and reduce the use of alcoholic products in order to
promote their health and wellbeing.
Conclusion
The Ottawa charter for health promotion provides a useful base to promote healthcare
in people and community as well. It helps people to concentrate on their health and ensure a
safe and joyful life, which is disease free by doing work toward strengthening peoples. The
nurses can play an important role in implementing the Ottawa charter strategies in the
reduction of harmful disease in youngsters by educating and aware them about the danger of
alcohol usage. The role of community and parents is very essential to make this plan
successful. However, if they are working in collaboration with the nurses, it is easy to reduce
the alcohol consumption and its harm to youngsters’ mental and physical health and make
their life enjoyable and safe.

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References
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