NURBN2009 Essay: Ottawa Charter and Cancer Council Victoria's Program

This essay examines the Quit Smoking Health Promotion Program by Cancer Council Victoria, analyzing its effectiveness in reducing smoking tendencies within the Melbourne population, and its impact on preventing respiratory diseases. It utilizes the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (OCHP) framework to assess the program's approach to health advocacy, health equity, community-based actions, and the re-orientation of healthcare services. The essay explores the concepts of health literacy, health education, and health empowerment within the context of the program, highlighting the need for culturally competent approaches, particularly for the indigenous population. It also emphasizes the critical role of nursing professionals in promoting smoking cessation and addressing biases to improve patient outcomes and health promotion. The analysis concludes that while the program addresses some aspects of the OCHP, it is not comprehensive and calls for more integrated strategies involving healthcare professionals and the Melbourne community to achieve comprehensive health-related outcomes.

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The establishment of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) has lead to the
initiation of change under which healthcare personnel promote patient empowerment and
education at the individual level or at community level (World Health Organisation or WHO,
2019). The following essay aims to highlight a detailed understanding regarding how the Quit
Smoking Health Promotion Program of Cancer Council Victoria is help to reduce smoking
tendencies among the Melbourne population and thereby helping to prevent and control
respiratory diseases. The essay will focus on impact of this chosen health promotion program
is addressing health literacy and health education and thereby facilitating health
empowerment among the selected population, Melbourne population.
Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion Strategy
According to the Ottawa Charter for the Health Promotion (OCHP), health promotion
is defined as a process that helps the people to increase their control over the health-related
status and thus assisting towards improving their overall quality of life. The action areas of
OCHP include: health advocacy, ensuring equal opportunities in healthcare, mediated co-
ordinated actions by the other stakeholder of health, building public health policy, creation
of supportive environment, strengthening community-based actions, development of the
personal skills and re-orientation of the healthcare services (WHO, 2019).
Quit smoking (Cancer Council Victoria)
According to the Victorian Government Department of Health, nearly one out of eight
cancer deaths in Australia are attributable to smoking. 15,000 Australians or more are
diagnosed with smoking-related cancer like lung cancer each yet. The data retrieved from the
Cancer Council Victorian’s Victorian Smoking and Health Survey (2018) showed that one

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out of 10 Victorian adults at present report for being daily smokers and the percentages are
high in the capital city of Melbourne. Significant decrease is however, achieved across the
regional areas of Victoria and among the communities who fall under the socio-economic
disadvantaged group (Victorian Health Victorian Government, 2019)
Quit Smoking (Cancer Council Victoria) and OHCP
The first aspect of the OCHP is heath advocacy. Health advocacy mainly deals with
direct service to the family of individuals along with the activities that help in the promotion
of the health and access to the healthcare in the communities and in larger public (WHO,
2019). The Quit Smoking health promotion program of Cancer Council Victoria (2020),
promotes health advocacy by providing direct services to people who are struggling to quit
smoking. Under the Quit Smoking program, the Quitline counsellors offer help to quit
smoking for cost of local call. Apart from phone calls, quit assistance is also offered through
quit smoking website, and QuitText. The second aspect of OCHP includes enabling health
equity. Health equity is achieved through secure foundation under a supportive environment
along with the proper access of information and life skills and opportunities in order to make
healthy lifestyle choices (WHO, 2019). Quit Smoking health Promotion program promotes
supportive environment in order to quit smoke like making smoke free zones, and sending
quit smoking messages under regular interval and sending tips and tricks in order to
overcome withdrawal symptoms. Assistance is also given for the prevention of the second
hand smoke. However, Quit Smoking program fails to provide any direct assistance for
overcoming diseases or other complications associated with smoking. Mediation of the health
promotion states that the health promotion policies or programs should adopt local needs and
possibilities based on the differing socio cultural needs (WHO, 2019). This is achieved
through designing customised approach for smoking prevention given through phone calls.

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OCHP also promotes strengthening community based actions along with the development of
the personal skills for disease prevention and control and improving the health behaviour
(WHO, 2019). Strengthening the community-based actions is achieved through making
smoke free zones and thus helping to reduce the chance of second hand smoke (Cancer
Council Victoria, 2019). However, the program fails to promote development of personal
skill for health promotion. Nkanunye and Obiechina (2017) stated that the development of the
personal skills for health promotion helps in increasing the disease self-management skills.
Disease self-management skills help to increase the intensity of the early implementation of
the interventions. However, no personal skills are developed for quitting smoke and
overcoming the changes of lung cancer under Quit Smoking health promotion program. Sixth
important aspect of OCHP includes re-orientation of the healthcare services through shared
responsibilities among the healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions (WHO, 2019).
These shared responsibilities are lagging the Quit Smoking health promotion program and it
also lags specific focus towards the Melbourne population as the program fail to include
active collaboration of the nurses, doctors, allied healthcare professionals and the Melbourne
population who are suffering from smoking addiction and who are victims of second hand
smoke. Thus overall, it can be said that Quit Smoking health promotion program by the
Cancer Council Victoria is not comprehensive in addressing all the aspects of the OHCP and
thus failing to promote comprehensive heal-related outcome. Thrasher et al. (2018) states that
quit smoking program through telephonic messages and cigarette pack inserts with the
imagery along with the information of cessation resource might be effective in promoting
smoking cessation.

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Health Literacy, Heath Education and Health Promotion and Empowerment
Health literacy is associated with the health-related outcomes as it is important for
health policy building and healthcare service delivery. The level of health literacy is average
among the population of Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria. However, the level of health
literacy is poor among the indigenous population leading to increased cases of smoking. Low
level of health literacy is associated is associated with higher level of loneliness and this
engaging in the fewer social activities and fewer social contacts and thereby increasing the
tendency of smoking (Geboers et al., 2016). Eyüboğlu and Schulz (2016) state that health
literacy in the domain of smoking and its side-effects is effective in increasing the level of
empowerment and thereby helping to influence habitual health behaviors and stronger health
promotion. Health literacy and health education are not same. Health literacy deals with
individual’s capacity to communicate, understand and to process the basic-health related
information and other services that are associated with appropriate health. Health literacy is
regarded as one of the last step towards the promotion of the health education. The
improvement in the overall level of health education helps in improving the life expectancy
of the people and helps to decrease the knowledge gap in health literacy (Rheault et al.,
2019). The promotion of the proper health education done under the community based
healthcare setup helps towards increasing the overall health education parameter among the
mass and thereby helping to further increase the disease related awareness and the level of
health literacy (Hart, Moore & Laverty, 2017). Quit Smoking Health Promotion campaign
promotes health education through telephonic calls, SMS and through social media messages
published in their official websites and blogs. However, this health literacy or health
education program is not comprehensive as it does not have any culturally competent
approaches towards the indigenous population of Australia who are the main victims of the
high smoking rates in Victoria, Melbourne. Bovill (2018) voted in favour of the culturally

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sensitive approaches coming from the nursing professionals in order to promote
comprehensive health literacy. McPhail-Bell et al. (2018) proposed in favor of the social
networking sites for increasing the level of disease empowerment and thereby helping to
increase the provision of success of the health promotion program. Social Networking Sites
(SNS) also helps to empower the indigenous and also helps in creating online communities
and online health promotion engagement.
Duty of the nursing professionals
Malone et al. (2018) conducted a study in order to identify the factors that act as
facilitators for the nursing professionals in order to provide smoking cessation advice to the
patients who are tobacco addicted or are susceptible towards developing diseases associated
to smoking. The analysis of the results from the semi-structured interview showed that
nursing professionals have negative perceptions towards the smokers and this decreases their
comprehensive involvement in the smoking cessation program and thus limiting effective
health outcomes. Thus it is the duty of the nursing professionals to reduce their level of bias
and to increase their level of confidence in the smoking cessation care and thus helping to
promote comprehensive health literacy and overcoming the smoking habits and other
associated diseases of smoking like lung cancer, oral cancer and chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease (Malone et al., 2018).
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion, it can be concluded that the Quit Smoking Health
Promotion Program by the Cancer Council Victoria is not comprehensive towards addressing
all the six different aspects of the OCHP of WHO. Thus the overall health promotion and
disease reduction like respiratory diseases are not comprehensive through the smoking
cessation program. The proper promotion health literacy, health education and health

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empowerment is important towards comprehensive health promotion and issues are
extremely important among the indigenous population residing in Melbourne, Victoria, The
nursing professionals must also come forward by overcoming their negative through process
towards smoking addiction and indigenous population and indulge in comprehensive health
literacy and education.

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References
Bovill, M. (2018). Culturally Responsive Approaches for the Empowerment of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Women in Smoking Cessation Care.
https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dax014
Cancer Council Victoria (2020) Quit Smoking. Access date: 20th April 2020. Retrieved from:
https://www.cancervic.org.au/preventing-cancer/quit-smoking
Eyüboğlu, E., & Schulz, P. J. (2016). Do health literacy and patient empowerment affect self-
care behaviour? A survey study among Turkish patients with diabetes. BMJ
open, 6(3), e010186. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010186
Geboers, B., Reijneveld, S. A., Jansen, C. J., & de Winter, A. F. (2016). Health literacy is
associated with health behaviors and social factors among older adults: Results from
the LifeLines Cohort Study. Journal of Health Communication, 21(sup2), 45-53.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2016.1201174
Hart, M. B., Moore, M. J., & Laverty, M. (2017). Improving Indigenous health through
education. The Medical Journal of Australia, 207(1), 11-12.
https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/207_01/10.5694mja17.00319.pdf
McPhail-Bell, K., Appo, N., Haymes, A., Bond, C., Brough, M., & Fredericks, B. (2018).
Deadly Choices empowering Indigenous Australians through social networking
sites. Health promotion international, 33(5), 770-780.
https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dax014

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Nkanunye, C. C., & Obiechina, G. O. (2017). Health communication strategies as gateway to
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.18001/TRS.4.2.7
Victorian Health Victorian Government (2019) Smoking prevalence reaches landmark 10%
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