Health Promotion

’Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and improve their health; is more than focusing on a single individual, it deals with a group of people at a community level towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions. Communities are a group of people that may or may not be spatially connected, but who share common interest, concerns or identity. These communities could be local, national or international with specific or broad interests’’. (WHO) They are within specific geographical area sharing common interests, values and beliefs.

Leah & Iuditm, (2016), described culture as the literature, art and history of a nation which can entail customs or traditions or could mean knowledge, standards

Looking at the key elements of health promotion by WHO, 1. Good governance for health; health promotion needs the effort of policy makers of the community to take decisions in favour of the health of the people. 2. Health literacy affects the health of individuals in the community. They need to make informed choices to improve their health, the food they eat, their environmental conditions and good healthy behaviour practice.

Embracing cultural diversity, understanding the cultural impact on community based health promotion and developing cultural competence that will equip the community health worker with skills in working and getting along with others.

In an increasing population with cultural diversity, nursing face the challenge of providing care to individuals of different backgrounds in a holistic and nondiscriminatory manner, nurses have a moral and ethical duty of delivering high nursing services including culturally appropriate care (Tuohy et al. 2008). According Tuohy et al. (2008), nurses need to be educated about culture aimed at providing optimum care since there are cultural issues to take into consideration regarding health beliefs and goals of care from the patients, their family and friends