Academic Essay on Health Promotion Program

Running head:HEALTH PROMOTION
Academic Essay on Health Promotion Program
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

HEALTH PROMOTION1
Introduction
Obesity is one of the leading health issues all across the world. In Australia, around
67 per cent of the adults suffer from obesity, while one-fourth of the children suffer from the
same (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2020). Several programs have been in place
to combat this problem, and they have had variable success. The Ottawa Charter is an
international agreement that can be used to evaluate Health Promotion Programs. It was
initiated in Ottawa, Canada, in 1984 by the World Health Organization (WHO)
(Healthpromotion.org.au., 2020). Health promotion plans are meant to encourage a specific
set of people to make better health-related decisions and improve their lifestyle. The program
that has been chosen for evaluation is Barwon Health Integrated Health Promotion Plan
2013-2017 aimed at lowering the rates of obesity in women aged between 18 and 50 who
have the responsibility of taking care of young children between ages 0 to 4 (G21.com.au.,
2020). This program took place in many areas amongst Groverdale in Victoria, Australia.
This essay aims to evaluate this program following the six action areas of the Ottawa Charter
for Health Promotion.
Discussion
The major aim of the conference in Ottawa was to come up with the charter to meet
the increasing healthcare demands of the world population. This charter has also been used to
distribute information about health promotion plans with ease (Healthpromotion.org.au.,
2020). After that, it has been increasingly used as a guideline to assess the reliability of
healthcare programs across the word. In this case, the Barwon Health IHP Plan that was
implemented between 2013 and 2017 has been evaluated as follows.

HEALTH PROMOTION2
Build Healthy Public Policy
Healthcare programs work beyond the ground level and it must be on the aim of the
policymakers to conduct the Health promotion (Healthpromotion.org.au., 2020). For
example, Barwon IHP Plan, entailed better policies for the common public to remain healthy.
Increased access to the community resources for the well-being of the women in Geelong was
ensured. An increased amount of community resources were shifted in helping women with
young children combat their obesity. The Department of Health, Victoria also recommended
the Healthy Lifestyle Program for women (HeLP-her) to ensure better health in this transition
period of a women’s life. This was a subpart of the Burwon Health IHP program and detailed
the interventions and steps specifically for women aged 18-50 with a young child. The
priority setting was based on Local Government Area Municipal Public Health & Wellbeing
Plans and Barwon Health and Bellarine Community Health Integrated Health Promotion
Plans (Barwonhealth.org.au., 2020). This gave the target population access to the necessary
resources and equity, deeming this program to be in line with the action area (Who.int.,
2020). The role of the nurses here is to bring awareness to why the resources are needed for
that target population and influence the policymakers to take the necessary steps.
Create Supportive Environments
Health cannot be separated from other goals of the society and hence the creation of
supportive environments is essential in a health promotion plan (Healthpromotion.org.au.,
2020). For example, Burwon Health IHP was an education-based non-prescriptive program
which was completely based on a supportive and helpful environment. The program is
designed to be low cost and easy to deliver. The program was delivered at places with
supportive environments such as social groups, kindergarten, clubs or local primary schools
were these group of women tend to be present. This created a very supportive environment
for the women and ensured that they feel like they can ask for help and work together to