ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the challenge of defining health promotion, why this is an integral aspect of sourcing and explores the evidence base and subsequently how such a challenge will impact on medical and health professional curricula. Outcomes in 'successful' health promotion interventions are associated with aims of the intervention – both the short term and long term. A major feature of health promotion is undoubtedly the importance of 'healthy public policy' with its potential for achieving social change via legislation, fiscal, economic and other forms of environmental engineering. Any credible discipline must have a robust evidence base upon which its practitioners can make sound clinical and policy decisions. Conceptual frameworks of health promotion for medical educators should facilitate the design of curricula. For medical and healthcare professionals, much of their role with regard to health promotion will be linked to disease-related issues and either the prevention of diseases or the approach to managing and improving the patient's situation.
