Health Promotion and Wellness in Nursing
Health promotion is the process to enable people to increase their control and improve health. It goes beyond focusing on individual behavior to focus on various social and environmental interventions. Health promotion programs focus on keeping the people health by engaging communities to choose healthy behavior as well as making changes that reduce the risk of developing diseases.
Efficient Ways for Health Promotion and Wellness in Nursing
These activities can help to increase awareness and implement strategies that assist in achieving health and wellness:
Communication
Communication allows nurses to utilize their knowledge to raise awareness about the healthy behaviors that the public should adopt for welfare. Health promotion communication includes using written and verbal strategies that influence making of healthier choices. It targets individuals, communities and populations. Health communication is sharing health messages to change knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.The things that nurses can communicate to promote health and wellness should be simple issues that people need to change or improve such as engaging in exercise, drinking plenty of water, sleeping enough and sharing good times.
These are some of the materials that the nursing community uses to communicate health messages.
- Brochures and pamphlets
- Newsletters
- Print media reports or articles
- Group discussions
- Case studies
- Digital tools and social media
- Videos
- Health Fairs
- Public service announcements
- Radio or TV commercials and broadcasts
Education
Education involves sharing information that empowers changes in behavior by taking actions that increase knowledge. Health education strategies include training, course and working with support groups. Health education is a strategic way of implementing health promotion, wellness and disease prevention programs because it provides learning experiences on relevant health topics.
Health education strategies are customized to suit the target population that will benefit immensely from a discussion of particular subjects. It might include health benefits and threats they face, capacity building tools and support of behavior change in the appropriate settings. These are examples of health education activities with a target audience.
- Seminars or webinars
- Workshops
- Classes
- Lectures courses
It is essential to ensure proficiency of the nursing staff that provides education to maintain the credibility of the program model.
Proposing Policy, System and Environmental Changes
Nursing associations can achieve more significant strides in pushing for changes in policies, systems and environments (PSE) for them to be more supportive of health and wellness. PSE should have a design those promotes healthy behaviors by increasing the availability and accessibility of healthy choices in the community. Nurses should recommend changes in PSE strategies with sustainability in mind.
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Policy change
Organizations, stakeholders and agencies make policy decisions, and the nursing community can make an input that helps in health promotion and wellness. Below are some examples of health promotion policy approaches:
- Establishing healthy food options at vending machines
- Establish policies that compel public places to have smoke free zones
- Tax increment on unhealthy foods
- Maintaining high safety standard at workplaces to avoid injury
System changes
A system change is a fundamental shift in the method of solving problems in an organization. The nursing fraternity can call for system changes that favour health promotion and wellness such as:
- Developing and implementing new interventions in disease prevention implementing new technology in healthcare
- Replicating or adapting a proven health promotion model
- Training and certification systems aligning with health promotion and wellness policies
Environmental change
Environmental change strategies can contribute much to improving wellness as they affect the physical, social and economic surrounding of individuals or communities. A good environment helps to promote healthy living in the population within a location. Examples of environmental changes that help in health promotion and wellness by preventing diseases include:
- Increasing availability of healthy fresh foods in restaurants and cafeteria at public institutions
- Installing walkways, hiking and biking trails to encourage exercising
- Promoting the use of green energy by local factories
Nurses can play an important in promoting health and wellness.
