The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and HIV/AIDS Prevention

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, an international agreement established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1986. The essay examines the charter's five key action areas: building healthy public policy, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, developing personal skills, and reorienting health care services. The primary focus is on applying these strategies to address HIV/AIDS. The author discusses how nurses can create supportive environments for those affected by HIV/AIDS, reorient healthcare services towards prevention, advocate for healthy public policies (including taxation and legislation), strengthen community involvement, and foster personal skill development related to health literacy and risk behavior. The essay emphasizes the importance of nurses in implementing the Ottawa Charter's principles to minimize the spread of HIV/AIDS, reduce stigmatization, and promote overall health within communities. The author references several academic sources to support their arguments, highlighting the relevance of the Ottawa Charter in contemporary public health practices.

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Running head: Health Promotion.
Health promotion.
Name:
Institutional affiliation:

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Introduction.
The Ottawa charter for health promotion is an international agreement signed at the first
international conference on health promotion organized by the World Health Organization
(WHO). It was held in Ottawa, Canada in November, 1986. It had five main areas identified as
building a healthy public policy and creating a supportive environment for all patients and
citizens. It also embraced developing personal skills and strengthening community action. The
fifth action area is reorienting health care services provided towards prevention of illnesses and
promotion of good health (WHO, 2017). The approach to these major action areas were
prioritized as advocating for social and developmental means, enabling of health equity by
amassing control of the determinants of health to the public and meditation which involves
collaboration of all sectors of the government and independent institutions.
Creating supportive environment
The disease focused on in this essay is HIV/AIDS a major killer in the world. A nurse
should create supportive environment for all the affected individuals including both the victims
of the diseases and their families (Fry & Zask, 2016). It is mundane for such victims to be
stigmatized in the society. They are avoided by common folk and easily used as examples of the
effects of immoral behavior in the society. They are often stigmatized.
Nurses should educate the public on the causes of this global killer including major
overlooked causes such as mother to child transmission and blood transfusion of unscreened
blood (Biomedical model). Nevertheless, they should discourage unhealthy behavior of sharing
of sharp and piercing instruments such as needles and similar equipment. Nurses should
encourage use of mass media to inform the public on effects of HIV/AIDS and promote equal

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treatment of the affected individuals on both the industrial and government sectors. Through
these methods, the public is enabled to control the determinants and causes of HIV/AIDS and
social effects of the disease are managed.
Nurses within the HIV/AIDS sector establish and promote partnerships between services
and individuals and also between clinical services and HIV/AIDS health promotion agencies,
peer based organizations and community groups (Gagné & Lapalme, 2017). For instance, by
ensuring services are available to target population by providing an accessible place, opening
hours that are convenient to access the service, breaking barriers to access such as financial
constraints and creating a professional and a more accommodating and hospitable environment
for those who engage or think of engaging with the service.
Reorienting health care services towards disease prevention
Nurses should reorient and re-direct health care services towards prevention of
HIV/AIDS transmission and facilitating the promotion of good health (Stock, Milczarski &
Saboga-Nunes, 2016). This can be achieved through enhancing safe health practices within
hospitals including screening of blood that is to be transfused. Expectant women should be
encouraged to deliver in hospitals. This generally reduces the chance of vertical transmission of
the disease. HIV/AIDS positive mothers are amassed with the required knowledge on how to
prevent transmitting the disease to their infants such as avoiding breastfeeding and proper
nursing care.
Nurses should also practice safe health practices (WHO, 2015). This will curtail spread
of the disease via unclean reused needles. Hospitals should be well equipped with all the
necessary materials to avoid shortage and the almost unavoidable reuse. Nurses should counsel

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HIV/AIDS patients on use of antiretroviral therapy to reduce the viral load in their body systems
and generally increase general life expectancy of the patients. Nurses should be trained and
equipped with any new medical information that would sharpen their skills a notch further to
enable them take care of patients better. Organization and planning of mobile clinics with free
testing of HIV/AIDS should generally promote health in the society and better health care.
Nurses should pressure the government to direct more funds and labor into health research
increasing the quality of health care.
Building healthy public policy
Nurses should encourage and participate in building a healthy public policy. This can be
approached through three methods: legislation, fiscal measures, taxation and organizational
change (Lee, 2015). Nurses can propose tax free production of antiretroviral drugs in both the
manufacturing phase and the distribution phase. This will ensure enough supply chain of drugs to
curb the death toll of HIV/AIDS as well as minimize spread of the disease concurrently.
Furthermore, the government should equip all public health centers with blood screening
machines to minimize unforeseen disease spread. Nurses should propose passing of laws that
curb intentional disease spread by infected persons as well as laws that punish negligent health
officers who lead to spread of HIV/AIDS probably consequential revoking of their practicing
license (Naidoo & Wills, 2016). Health centers should be put liable to any disease spread within
the facility resulting from negligence or absence of health personnel.
Nurses should encourage the government to setup facilities that counsel victims of
HIV/AIDS on healthy behaviors to adopt and which to halt. Tobacco use and use of other

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recreational drugs should be discouraged as this puts a heavy toll on the already weak immune
system. These facilities can also create jobs for the victims of HIV/AIDS to feel useful as
members of the society. This reduces stigmatization promoting a healthy society. Companies that
develop and distribute sex products including condoms should be evaluated and charged after
production of counterfeit products that play a role in spread of HIV/AIDS.
Strengthening community action
Nurses should draw the community in the health promotion process. This draws
community resources into provision of social support and self-help for the community (Mendes,
Plaza, & Wallerstein, 2016). This also leads to development of flexible systems for strengthening
of public participation in addressing health matters. For instance nurses can encourage an
agreement between hospitals and hypermarkets, supermarkets and common retail stores to sell
more healthy and nutritive products in the community. This increases the health standards in the
society generally increasing the quality of life of HIV/AIDS patients.
Schools can also be encouraged to teach and include HIV/AIDS as a fundamental subject
in the curriculum (Nutbeam, 2018). This will reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS as young children
learn how to protect themselves from contacting this killer disease. Nurses can encourage the
youth within the society to attend concerts that counsel and teach them how to practice safe sex
relations and how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Putting into consideration that people
aged 20-29 are the majority living with both diagnosed and non-diagnosed HIV/AIDS. This
would be a big step in reducing HIV/AIDS prevalence within the community. Nurses should
encourage church leaders within the society to teach and encourage moral behavior within their

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churches. Through these activities, the community helps itself minimize HIV/AIDS spread
within the community and the state as whole.
Developing personal skills
Developing personal skills is an important aspect in the Ottawa charter in health
promotion. It included development of health literacy, foundation motor skills and gaining
understanding of the link between risk behavior and life style diseases. Nurses should be
equipped with all the skills required to take care of patients. Discipline should be instilled in
nurses to minimize cases of negligence that result in deteriorating health care (Thompson,
Watson & Tilford, 2018). Individuals should be educated on the transmission of disease and the
use of sterilized equipment. Nurses have a part to play in encouraging schools to teach students
about nutrition and which food labels have immunity boosting nutrients and which don’t.
Nurses are involved in capacity building initiatives such as training volunteers through
HIV/AIDS organizations including AIDS councils and peer support agencies. Nurses should
provide an avenue for young people to develop and understand their values and insights about
sexuality. (Sebar, Morgan & Lee, 2016). They should also assist young people to understand the
essence of acting responsibly in issues regarding sexual relationships, including addressing
abstinence, pressures to be prematurely indulge in sexual behaviors, and the use of contraception
and other sexual health measures at their disposal.
Conclusion
The five strategies of health promotion in the Ottawa charter ,1986 can be well achieved
and implemented through ad vocation of health as a social and developmental means resource as

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well as through attainment of health equity by empowering individuals to be controllers of the
determinants of health (WHO,2016). Meditation through collaboration of all sectors (social,
economic and cultural) both in the government and non-government sectors can also be achieved
in the health sector via use of nurses.
Through building of a healthy public policy HIV/AIDS spread can be minimized by
imposition of less taxes on antiretroviral drugs and passing of tough laws in the parliament
barring medical negligence and individual malice in spreading the disease. Nurses also create
supportive environments by encouraging the society to accept HIV positive persons minimizing
stigmatization. In addition, they strengthen community action developing flexible systems that
lead to self-help within the society and increase of the quality of health within the community
population.
The society is taught how the global disease spreads, how to avoid contacting and
disease and ultimately how to manage the disease if one acquires it. Nurses also lead to
reorientation of health services towards prevention of illness by organizing seminars and free
medical checkups in the community where individuals know their status eliminating spread of
the disease unwillingly. They ensure safe health practices are done in hospitals preventing
hospital related disease contractions. Development of personal skills, the final area in health
promotion is also achieved.

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References
Fry, D., & Zask, A. (2016). Applying the Ottawa Charter to inform health promotion programme
design. Health promotion international, 32(5), 901-912.
Gagné, T., & Lapalme, J. (2017). 1986: Ottawa and onwards. The Lancet Public Health, 2(2),
e71.
Lee, M. S. (2015). The principles and values of health promotion: building upon the Ottawa
charter and related WHO documents. Korean Journal of Health Education and
Promotion, 32(4), 1-11.
Mendes, R., Plaza, V., & Wallerstein, N. (2016). Sustainability and power in health promotion:
community-based participatory research in a reproductive health policy case study in
New Mexico. Global health promotion, 23(1), 61-74.
Naidoo, J., & Wills, J. (2016). Foundations for Health Promotion-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Nutbeam, D. (2018). Health education and health promotion revisited. Health Education
Journal, 0017896918770215.
Sebar, B., Morgan, K., & Lee, J. (2016). Health promotion principles and practice: addressing complex
public health issues using the Ottawa Charter. Public Health: Local and Global Perspectives, 45.
Stock, C., Milczarski, A., & Saboga-Nunes, L. A. (2016). Is the Ottawa Charter still relevant? A survey
among health promotion practitioners and researchers: Christiane Stock. The European Journal
of Public Health, 26(suppl_1), ckw168-017.
Thompson, S. R., Watson, M. C., & Tilford, S. (2018). The Ottawa Charter 30 years on: still an
important standard for health promotion. International Journal of Health Promotion and
Education, 56(2), 73-84.
World Health Organization. (2015). Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986. 1986; 2015.

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World Health Organization. (2016). Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. Geneva: WHO, 1986.
World Health Organization. (2017). Global conferences on health promotion–charters, declarations and
other documents: Ottawa 1986, Adelaide 1988, Sundsvall 1991, Jakarta 1997, Mexico 2000 and
Bangkok 2005.