Health Promotion Initiative

This paper involves the detailed analysis of the National Alcohol Strategy in Australia in relation to the determinants of health for the principal purposes of determining its efficacy in advancing Australians with better healthcare outcomes. It also discusses the impact of social determinants of health on health promotion initiatives.

Running Head: HEALTH PROMOTION INITIATIVE 1
Health Promotion Initiative
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Institution
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Health Promotion Initiative
The first International Conference on Health Promotion culminated with the formulation
of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion in 1986 in Ottawa, Canada. In this conference,
national governments, global and local healthcare organizations, as well as local communities,
were sensitized on the need to realize the objective of "Health for All” through health promotion
by the year 2000 and beyond (Lee, 2015). The World Health Organization (WHO); the organizer
of this conference envisaged the significance of health promotion as a pathway of advancing all
global citizens an “economically productive level of health by the year 2000” and beyond. In the
Australian context, many health promotion initiatives have been launched to improve the
healthcare situations of all Australians since the declaration of the Ottawa Charter for Health
Promotion. One such health promotion initiative is the “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026”.
This paper involves the detailed analysis of this health promotion initiative in relation to the
determinants of health for the principal purposes of determining its efficacy in advancing
Australians with better healthcare outcomes.
The WHO recognized alcohol abuse as a primary healthcare concern in 2008. To this
end, the body has come up with formidable healthcare initiatives to reduce the harm of alcohol
consumption across the globe. The WHO observed that in 2004 alone approximately 2.5 million
people lost their lives worldwide as a result of alcohol-related causes. Of this number, young
people of between ages 15 and 29 were approximately 320,000. Moreover, the WHO contended
that harmful alcohol abuse constitutes the third leading risk factor for disability and premature
deaths globally (World Health Organization, 2008). In its approach, the WHO demands world
nations need to ratify its strategic health promotion initiative provisions into national and local
specific strategies in combating the same.

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The principal aim of the “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026” is to advance a federal
framework to promote the prevention and minimization of alcohol-related harm amongst
individuals, families, and communities throughout Australia. In doing so, the Australian
government; Department of Health is committed to the continuous identification of national
priority areas of action as well as opportunities for action plans to be considered and taken.
Moreover, the initiative is committed to promoting and enabling partnership, commitment and
collaboration between the government and non-government sectors in the achievement of the
same. The initiative is geared towards achieving a 10% reduction in health degrading alcohol
consumption. Harmful alcohol consumption refers to alcohol consumption levels that posit risks
and injury to individuals from any single alcohol drinking occasion in a span of just one month.
These levels also relate to alcohol consumption levels that have a high potential of subjecting
individuals to high risks of contracting diseases or injury in their lifetime.
Achieving the goals of health promotion initiatives are however bound to be haunted by
the facets and factors informing the social determinants of health. The WHO (2008) contends
that the social determinants of health are tightly linked to the socioeconomic conditions facing
different individuals, communities and social settings. Their distribution across different
populations posits a direct impact on the health status of these people and may act to either
promote positive health outcomes or suppress the same. As such, by and large, they sharply
deviate from the individual risk factors such as genetics and behavioral risk factors that may lead
to the health deterioration of a person at a personal level.
The WHO asserts that the unequal distribution of the social determinants of health is not
to be taken as a "natural" phenomenon but rather the result of poor management of social

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policies, bad politics, and unfair economic arrangements. Moreover, these determinants posit an
intimate relationship with health outcomes and tend to cluster together- for example, people
living under poverty are more or less expected to experience adverse social determinants
(Newman, Baum, Javanparast, O'Rourke, & Carlon, 2015). To this end, the formulation,
planning, and implementation of health promotion initiatives tend to be curtailed by the rampant
inequalities of these social determinants across different social settings. In a report developed by
the Commission on Social Determinants of Health of the WHO dubbed “Closing the gap in a
generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health" in 2008, the
WHO identified two striking areas of social determinants of health that jurisdictions across the
globe need to continuously address especially when formulating health promotion initiatives
(World Health Organization, 2008). One area is the daily living conditions that constitute
determinants such as fair employment, social protection, healthy physical environments and fair
access to healthcare.
The other one relates to the distribution of resources, power, and money with
determinants such as healthy working conditions, political empowerment, resource distribution,
equity in access of health programs, economic inequalities, and gender equity is the major social
determinants considerations. All these social determinants of health have the potential of
impacting health initiatives and outcomes in one way or another. Since health inequities by and
large emanate from societal conditions in which people find themselves in at birth and continue
to live, work and age in, they are entirely unacceptable and deserve to be addressed if equality
and equity in health outcomes is to be achieved across different society setups. Jurisdiction
across the globe including Australia ought to lay formidable strategies to enhance equality and
ease of access to resources in areas such as early childhood development, education,

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employment, housing, economic status and effective health promotion initiatives for the
prevention and treatment of various healthcare challenges.
The Centers for Disease Control in the United States perceive the social determinants of
health as the life-promoting resources. These include resources such as food supply, efficient
transport, comfortable housing, rewarding education, socioeconomic relationships, decent
employment and easy access to healthcare. The equitable and efficient distribution of these
determinants across different populations by and large dictates the life expectancy and quality of
life of these different populations. Arguably, social determinants of whichever nature will have
great impacts on health promotion initiatives and therefore health equity across populations are
only possible through the equitable distribution of the same.
In closing some of the gaps caused by social determinants of health with regard to access
to healthcare initiatives that target alcohol abuse patients, the government of Australian has been
proactive in advancing formidable strategies to counteract the same. One such stricking social
determinant of health that the “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026” has addressed is varying
socioeconomic status among different Australian individuals, households and society setups.
Differences in socioeconomic status among individuals and communities imply that some
members of the community have abilities to consume more alcohol than others. At the
population level, per-capita alcohol purchasing power posits a very close correlation with alcohol
consumption. The number of those who decide to abstain from alcohol consumption decrease as
the per-capita income Increases.
This association weakens the moment the per-capita alcohol affordability threshold is
achieved. Higher socioeconomic status attracts occasional drinking while lower socioeconomic
status attracts larger alcohol intakes per a single occasion of drinking. This situation is however

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dependent on the associated socioeconomic status measure such as occupation, income, and
neighborhood deprivation and education levels. Moreover, socioeconomic status when interacted
with different sociodemographic factors it may advance different alcohol consumption patterns
(Rubin, 2016). For instance, poor neighborhood socioeconomic status when combined with a
younger population may lead to excessive consumption of binge.
The “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026” contains formidable national alcohol
policies and strategies whose priority areas of focus are aimed at destroying the socioeconomic
orientations that enable different individuals and community setups easily access and abuse
alcohol. The initiative also constitutes strategies aimed at promoting healthier communities
through the improvement of communication, drinking guidelines, awareness of harms of alcohol,
and the importance of having a minimum drinking age. Moreover, the initiative is aimed at
supporting individuals across different community setups through advancing support systems
and treatment services.
Employment inequality is another social determinant of health that greatly influences
alcohol consumption patterns as well as ease of accessing healthcare. Generally, people in
employment tend to drink more than their unemployed counterparts. However, employed people
tend to drink alcohol products that are safer than those who are unemployed. Moreover,
employed people tend to be occasional light drinkers while their unemployed counterparts tend
to be heavy drinkers on a single drinking occasion. Due to their low-income levels, the
unemployed are exposed to alcohol products that can easily impair on their health by posing
more complex healthcare challenges (Lee et al., 2014). The “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-
2026” suggest interventions such as peer interventions, organizational culture changes at

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workplaces, the formation of support groups, psychosocial skills training and rehabilitation
services to cater for the needs of total alcoholics.
A social determinant of health that is perhaps not addressed by the “National Alcohol
Strategy; 2018-2026” is early childhood implications. Children born and raised in disadvantaged
communities tend to have greater childhood risk factors that can influence later alcohol abuse
behaviors. These include risk factors such as parental drug involvement; child abuse and neglect;
and family breakdown (Sussman, & Arnett, 2014). Intervention to this end may include parental
education, brief interventions, family home visiting, and behavior management and school
preparation programs. In addition to the early childhood exposure to alcohol, maternal alcohol
use during pregnancy has the potential of exacerbating a newborn’s health condition.
Alcohol abuse in the Australian context is really a complex and multifaceted healthcare
problem and especially when associated with major social health determinants. It has
continuously remained to be one of the most abused drugs across Australia with approximately
90% of adults thought to have consumed it at some point of their lifetime (Newman et al., 2015).
The planning and development of health promotion initiatives meant to curtail the abuse of
alcohol across Australian communities are greatly affected by the various social determinants of
health due to their complex and multifaceted nature.
Alcohol’s multifaceted relationship with various social determinants of health impacts
inequitably the planning and subsequent development of health promotion initiatives meant to
combat the same. While positive social determinants of health have enabled some sections of the
communities to receive adequate health interventions meant to eliminate the risks posed by
alcohol, negative social determinants have bared other sections of the communities from
accessing the same. This makes the planning and development of health promotion initiatives

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troublesome. Though alcohol consumption is not evenly distributed across Australian
communities, it nonetheless harms communities disproportionately with the greatest impacts felt
by disadvantaged groups.
To this end, policy makers involved in the planning and developments of health
promotion initiatives are easily distracted by the inabilities of properly prioritizing between
various strategies that can take care of different determinants of health. Moreover, the same
challenge is extended to the moment when policy makers want to target different individuals and
communities affected by specific social determinants of health. While closing the gaps caused by
some determinants necessitates the application of individualized, community and national wide
intervention strategies, closing others may require focusing on the affected individuals, particular
communities or the nation at large (Embrett, & Randall, 2014). As such, different individuals,
families, and communities cannot be simply generalized and health promotion initiatives
impacted on them because of different social determinants of health affecting them and at
different levels. This greatly impacts the planning, development and implementation of the same.
For instance, interventions strategies for alcohol abusers with different socioeconomic
status require totally different combating strategies for the health promotion initiative to be
effective. Higher income individuals from richer neighborhood may do well with health
promotion initiatives such as sensitization of the harm of alcohol through channels such as social
and mainstream media. For people with lower socioeconomic status, road campaigns,
rehabilitation sessions, brief counseling sessions can be more effective. This difference in
individuals and community setups also tend to impact on budget allocations for various health
promotion initiatives. Effective planning and development of intervention strategies are severely

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affected in such a complex and multifaceted social determinant framework and community
setups (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014).
Arguably, health promotion has been labeled by the WHO as a formidable channel
through which global citizens can access healthcare with a lot of ease. The current “National
Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026” health promotion initiative is aimed at preventing and minimizing
alcohol-related harm amongst individuals, families, and communities throughout Australia by
prioritizing areas of action as well as opportunities for action plans to be taken. However, the
planning and development of the “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026” is bound to be
impacted by the differentials of the different social determinants of health causing inequalities
and equity concerns in the access of healthcare by different members of the Australian
community. Allen, Balfour, Bell, and Marmot (2014) insist that a health promotion initiative
such as “National Alcohol Strategy; 2018-2026” need to consider formidable intervention
strategies to counteract the challenges posed by different social determinants of health.

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