ABSTRACT
In a succession of policy statements from official health bodies in Britain since the late 1970s, the whole range of professions working in health has increasingly sought – or been exhorted – to take on disease prevention, health education and health promotion activities as part of their job. I do not propose in this chapter to chart these developments, but I would like to quote from two recent reviews which both (from different standpoints) suggest that the rise of health promotion has contributed to the creation of a major watershed for the helping and caring professions:
Summary The rise of health promotion has profound implications for the role and training of all the health/welfare professions and for the development of teamwork. Health promotion could be a test-bed for innovation in multidisciplinary collaboration, and this chapter sketches an agenda for action and research. It notes three successive phases in training for health promotion: ‘generic’, ‘mainstreamed’ and ‘team-oriented’. It commends more investment in this last type, but suggests that studies are urgently needed of successes and failures in shared learning as a basis for teamwork in health promotion. It observes also that there is a serious shortage of research on the new ‘alliances for health’ favoured in recent health promotion policy initiatives – e.g. Health for All 2000 and The Health of the Nation. It recommends that future development projects must include opportunities to investigate the processes which enhance or obstruct joint work. Finally, three key issues are identified which need attention if frustration and failure are to be avoided: disparities in organizational arrangements; competing professional rationales; and the psychodynamics of interpersonal relations.
