Importance of Health Promotion

This article discusses the importance of health promotion to patients. It explains how health promotion provides the avenue for nurses to share information and develop community programs. It also highlights how health promotion reduces the cost of medical treatment, improves the health status of patients, reduces premature death, and enhances the quality of life for all people.

RUNNING HEAD: IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH PROMOTION 1
Importance of Health promotion
Name:
Institution:
Tutor:
Date:

IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH PROMOTION 2
Importance of Health Promotion to patients
Health promotion is important to patients because it provides the avenue for nurses to
share information and develop community programs. The role of the nurses is not only to offer
direct patient care but to prevent diseases as well (Hicking-Woodison, 2017). Effective disease
control lies in the ability to share information on diseases and how patients can protect
themselves against infection. This act of sharing information to the patients is what is known as
health promotion .There are different ways in which this can be achieved and they include
community education sessions and one on one counselling sessions with patients.
Health promotion is important to patients since it reduces the cost of medical treatment.
As previously explained, health promotion provides information to the patients on how well they
can protect themselves from different diseases. A good example is cholera can be prevented
through proper hygiene while HIV/AIDS can be protected through the use of condoms (Marcus-
Varwijk et al., 2016). This act of educating the patients to protect themselves will render them
free of certain diseases and they will not incur any expenses seeking treatment. This therefore
reduces the cost of treatment that could otherwise be used in other income generating activities.
Health promotion is important as it generally improves the health status of patients.
Health promotion can be used as a tool to educate different patients,their families, communities
as well as states and the general state at large by sharing information on how they can lead a
healthy lifestyle .The healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, eating a balanced diet and
reducing consumption of alcohol and some drugs (Perry, Nicholls, Duffield, & Gallagher, 2017).
Once the individuals get this information and put it to practice, the prevalence of certain chronic
conditions like diabetes and hypertension would reduce and this improves their health status.

IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH PROMOTION 3
Health promotion is also important to patients as it reduces premature death. According
to different studies, premature deaths contribute to the highest rates of mortality in the whole
world. The studies attribute the premature deaths to lack of information .This is where health
promotion comes in handy. Health promotion can equip the parents with information on how
certain diseases can be prevented among the infants such as vaccination. This information would
assist in reducing the premature deaths if the parents take in whatever they are told by the
healthcare providers.
Finally, health promotion is important to patients since it enhances the quality of life for
all people. Health promotion involves providing or sharing information regarding how well
individuals can look after their health .It also provides information on different monitoring
programs that individuals can subscribe themselves to (Persson & Haraldsson, 2013). Monitoring
has been shown to improve the quality of life since any potential disease is effectively controlled
when realized at an early stage. Health promotion is a very important tool and the government
through the Ministry of Health should strongly support the programs. This is because a healthy
people means a healthy nation.

IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH PROMOTION 4
References
Hicking-Woodison, L. (2017). Planning Health Promotion Programs: An Intervention
Mapping Approach. Nursing Standard, 32(6), 33-33. doi:10.7748/ns.32.6.33.s38
Marcus-Varwijk, A. E., Koopmans, M., Visscher, T. L., Seidell, J. C., Slaets, J. P., &
Smits, C. H. (2016). Optimizing Tailored Health Promotion for Older Adults.
Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, 2, 233372141562529.
doi:10.1177/2333721415625293
Perry, L., Nicholls, R., Duffield, C., & Gallagher, R. (2017). Building expert agreement on
the importance and feasibility of workplace health promotion interventions for nurses
and midwives: A modified Delphi consultation. Journal of Advanced Nursing,
73(11), 2587-2599. doi:10.1111/jan.13345
Persson, L., & Haraldsson, K. (2013). Health promotion in Swedish schools: school
managers' views. Health Promotion International, 32(2), 231-240.
doi:10.1093/heapro/dat073