Community Diversity Research 2022

Running head: COMMUNITY DIVERSITY
Health promotion and disease prevention
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

COMMUNITY DIVERSITY1
Module 1
Discussion 1: Defining and working with communities
According to Zakus and Lysack (1998), a community may be defined as a collection of
heterogeneous individuals organising themselves into specific groups working together
towards a collective goal and is characterized with a diversity, which forms the basis of
conflicts in the context of selecting their representatives.
As Australia has a diverse culture with inhabitants originating from countries whose native
language is not English. This results in linguistic diversities within a locality and variations in
cultural backgrounds and perceptions. Hence, the neighborhood cannot be attributed or
identified by a specific culture or language. The primary problems associated with this
diversity in health promotion is that the people of the community have different perceptions
and beliefs which are often conflicting with other cultural beliefs. Thus, outlining the
strategies for promoting health targeted towards a particular locality is difficult as the
lifestyle also varies. The key steps of Laverack’s ladder of community-based interaction for
the success of a health promotion program being from community readiness to community
participation, engagement, organization, development, capacity, action, and finally,
community empowerment (Laverack, 2007). The primary strategy for a successful health
promotion program in the locality is community readiness. It involves preparing the
community for collaboration with an external partner to unify the opinions of all the diverse
cultures and indicates a willingness among the people of the neighbourhood to interact
among themselves towards a common goal (Kostadinov et al., 2015).

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References
Kostadinov, I., Daniel, M., Stanley, L., Gancia, A., & Cargo, M. (2015). A systematic review
of community readiness tool applications: implications for reporting. International
journal of environmental research and public health, 12(4), 3453-3468.
Laverack, G. (2007). Health promotion practice: building empowered communities.
McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Zakus, J. D. L., & Lysack, C. L. (1998). Revisiting community participation. Health policy
and planning, 13(1), 1-12.
Discussion 2: Community capacity building and empowerment
Labonte and Laverack (2001a), describe community capacity as a measure of “social and
organizational relationships with dynamic qualities rather than static properties”. The
description of community capacity acts as an additional challenge for the process of health
promotion, as it includes inculcating a capacity building relationship. The various domains of
community capacity building serve as useful guidelines for the operation of the program,
which requires monitoring or evaluation with the participants. Community empowerment
implies taking ownership and suitable actions to bring about necessary change in the
community and is requires the participation, involvement, or engagement of the members of
the community. Community empowerment targets the cultural, social, economic and
political factors underpinning health, and aims at building partnerships with other relevant
sectors in resolving health issues (Who.int, 2020). To foster community empowerment
successfully in the community or any community setting, it is essential for people to realize
that they are their own assets and the external agents act as catalysts for the community to
acquire power. A useful approach for incorporating these principles of community
empowerment can be to divide the participation of community among three fundamental

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agents of the locality, namely the residents, professionals and the local authorities to
segregate the work and distribute their contributions towards collectively improving the
quality of life and health. This enables the people of the community to assume power over
their role and takes responsibility for their contribution.
References
Labonte, R., & Laverack, G. (2001). Capacity building in health promotion, Part 1: For
whom? And for what purpose?. Critical public health, 11(2), 111-127.
Who.int. (2020). WHO | Track 1: Community empowerment. Retrieved 8 April 2020, from
https://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/7gchp/track1/en/
Module 2
Discussion 1: Theories approaches and models of health promotion
Some of the most commonly used models and theories include the health belief model, social
cognitive theory, behavioral change model, health action model, the theory of planned
behavior and educational model. Each of these models and theories has its strengths and
limitations. In the context of cultural diversity, the advantage of the health belief model is
that it displays the importance of an individual’s personal beliefs and identifies correlations
among the effects of modifications in the perception of behavior (Green & Murphy, 2014).
However, Gottwald & Goodman-Brown (2012) highlights its limitation in assuming that the
process of making decisions is not influenced by social life, family, cultural surroundings and
political factors. Another popular theory, the social cognitive theory is beneficial as is very
comprehensive and takes into account environment, cognition and human behavior as a
whole. However, this theory lacks complete effectiveness as it is not well-organized and
based only on the dynamic interaction between environment, behavior and person and lacks