Promoting Health: Hypertension Awareness Campaign in the UK via Poster

This practical assignment focuses on a health promotion campaign designed to raise awareness about hypertension in the United Kingdom. The campaign utilizes a poster artefact to inform the public about the risk factors, symptoms, and potential complications of hypertension, emphasizing the imp...Read More

Practical Project

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES....................................................................................................3
TARGET AUDIENCE...........................................................................................................3
HEALTH PROMOTION THEORY......................................................................................3
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF ARTEFACT...............................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
As per the definition given by WHO, Health promotion can be defines as the process that
enables the people to practice control over the maintenance of their own health. This process
involves designing of social and environmental interventions that can help the people to protect
their health and quality of life. Health promotion help the people to identify the main cause of
the disease and provide them with ways to prevent those causes rather than providing them with
treatments and cures for the disease (Nutbeam, and Muscat, 2021) .
MAIN BODY
The increasing trend of choices related to poor lifestyle choices which contribute to
increasing number of cases of hypertension in UK suggests the need of campaigns for health
promotion regarding the factor that contribute to this serious disorder. Their is a need for poster
artefacts for making people aware of ill and fatal effects of hypertension to help them avoid it
beforehand only. Posters being displayed at various health care settings and community sites will
be effective in gaining attention of huge number of people and spreading awareness (Akhmimi,
Lip, and Shantsila, 2020).
Aims and Objectives
This well being campaign aims at spreading awareness among the people of UK on a
large scale about the factors related to lifestyle that contribute to acquiring of the public health
issue of hypertension. This will allow the people to identify the root cause of hypertension and to
eliminate those from their lifestyle.
Target audience
This health promotion campaign targets the people of United Kingdom with age in the
range of 30-79 as they are more prone to be suffering from hypertension. Even through this
campaign the people below the of 30 can also be made aware about the facts, causes, effects,
complications and management of hypertension.
Health promotion theory
The health promotion theory behind the designing of the poster artefact is the Tannahill
theory. Andrew Tannahill in 1980's formulated this model by including three overlapping
spheres. Each of these three spheres represented health education, prevention and health

protection as the three activities. Tannahill aimed at making the concept of health promotion by
adding health education to it. Health education is designed in such a way that it brings positive
changes in the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and beliefs of people so that health maintenance can
be facilitated. Disease prevention aims at spreading awareness about the risks factors of the
disease so that an individual can eliminate these risk factors (van Teijlingen and et.al., 2021). It
also aims at reducing the consequences of the disease to maximum extent possible. Health
protection is linked with the policies that ensure equal access to the healthcare system to all and
emphasises on the awareness regarding the importance of consulting a practitioner and
maintaining regular access to health care. Health education aims at the betterment of life skills in
order to prevent this public health issue (Anugwom,2020).
Strength and Weakness of artefact
The artefact of poster selected for the promotion of health in context to hypertension will
be helpful in spreading awareness. The poster consist of content that would be helpful in
increasing the understanding of people of United Kingdom about the disease. The poster contains
information about the pathophysiology of the disease in general language which can be easily
understood by a general person(Sumampow, Konoralma and Sukandar, 2019,). The poster
further consists of the facts related to the disease which would make the people understand that
how alarming the issue is and that this issue needs to be addressed with grave concern. In
addition to that this poster also mentions the probable reasons like lifestyle related choices,
dietary choices, prevalence of other diseases, habits of smoking and consuming alcohol etc. can
contribute to elevating the blood pressure levels of an individual.
The poster also mentions this disease as a “silent killer” stating this disease to be a
serious one and to make people aware about the importance of keeping a regular check on the
blood pressure levels so that the prevalence of disease can be identified before it can cause
significant damage to the other parts of the body. The poster also displays the complication that
hypertension is linked with stating the ill effects that elevated blood pressure levels have on the
other parts of the body like making the walls of the blood vessels rigid an increasing the chances
of them getting ruptured due to constant elevated pressure. The damaging effect it can have on
the heart that it can even result in major issues of angina and stroke and even heart failure due to
increased lead on the heart.

The symptoms also have been incorporated in the poster like anxiety, morning headaches,
frequent nosebleed incidences, irregular heart beat, vomiting, nausea etc. Mentioning these
symptoms in the poster will allow the people to gain knowledge of these symptoms which are
usually avoided by the people by considering them as general incidences. Knowing these
symptoms will allow the people in early identification of the prevalence of the disease so that
steps can be taken for the management of hypertension before it takes its severe form with
symptoms like chest pain and tremors in muscles. Along with the symptoms poster also mentions
the changes that one needs to bring in his lifestyle in order to manage as well as avoid acquiring
this public health issue.
Displaying of such informative posters in various health care settings and in various
community settings like yoga centres will be very effective. Posters being large in size will
effectively contain all the information required for effective health promotion. The posters are
also capable of gaining attention of a huge number of people at a single time and other than
hanging the posters at the required site does not require any other for efforts for promoting it.
The weakness linked with a poster artefact is that it can not be used to pass on the information
from the people who first gained that knowledge unlike leaflets which can be passed on.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above discussion that health promotion is very necessary in
order to manage the increasing cases of a disorder and the artefact of poster can prove to very
useful.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Akhmimi, A., Lip, G.Y. and Shantsila, A., 2020. What is the impact of the latest ACC/AHA and
ESC/ESH guidelines on the management of hypertension in the UK?. Expert Opinion
on Pharmacotherapy, 21(10), pp.1123-1125.
Anugwom, E.E., 2020. Health promotion and its challenges to public health delivery system in
Africa. Public Health in Developing Countries-Challenges and Opportunities.
Nutbeam, D. and Muscat, D.M., 2021. Health promotion glossary 2021. Health Promotion
International, 36(6), pp.1578-1598.
Sumampow, J., Konoralma, K. and Sukandar, D., 2019, October. The Effectiveness of Health
Promotion Method Using Poster in Improving Patients’ Behaviour to Prevent
Transmission of Pulmonary Tuberculosis Disease. In Proceeding 2nd Manado Health
Polytechnic International Conference (pp. 115-121).
van Teijlingen, K., Devkota, B., Douglas, F., Simkhada, P. and van Teijlingen, E., 2021.
Understanding health education, health promotion and public health. Journal of Health
Promotion, 9(1), pp.1-7.