The Health Belief Model In Health Promotion

This essay will be explaining and discussing on what is health and wellbeing. It will briefly explain about the Health Belief Model (1966) as this model is frequently used in health promotion. It will also explain a health promotion activity used in a primary school, which will be focused on healthy eating and nutrition, this will be explained further on in the essay.
First of all, The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that health is when someone is in a ‘’complete state of physical, mental and social well-being; and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO, 2005). This statement means that health is when someone is holistically healthy, meaning being able to fully function normally. On the betterhealth website, they described wellbeing as a complex combination of a person's physical, mental, emotional and social health factors, and it is not only associated with the absence of not having an illness or disease (Betterhealth, 2014). This means that having no illnesses or a disease does not always equate to happiness and fulfilment. The website also states that well-being is strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction (Betterhealth, 2014).

Therefore, these statements mean that wellbeing is how someone feels about themselves and whether they are happy or not.
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, 1986) highlighted the conditions and resources required for health and set out the action required to achieve Health for All by 2000 (Verrinder, G, Talbot, L, 2010).

The charter consists of three health promotion strategies, these are to enable, mediate, and advocate which is needed and applied to all health promotion action areas (HSC, 2015). ‘’Health promotion is the process of enabling people to aware and to make individuals improve their health’’ (Betterhealth, 2011). The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that health promotion is ‘’the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions’’ (WHO,

2015).
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) provides guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health (Nice, 2015). Nice said the following ‘’our guidance can be used by the NHS, local authorities, employers, voluntary groups and anyone else involved in delivering care or promoting wellbeing’’ (Nice, 2015). Depending on their main focus health promoters’ professionals can work in communities, health centres, local authority buildings, hospitals, offices, and sports and fitness centres (University of Birmingham, 2014).