Community Action for Health Promotion: A Strategy to Empower Individuals and Communities

1991/07/01 by E. Richard Brown · 97 citations
Health Professions · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · #Action (physics) #Behavior change #Business #Community Health and Development #Community health #Environmental health #Health belief model #Health education #Health policy #Health promotion #Medicine #Nursing #Political science #Promotion (chess) #Psychological intervention #Psychology #Public Health Policies and Education #Public health #Public relations #School Health and Nursing Education #Social determinants of health #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.2190/akcp-l5a4-mxxq-dw9k

published in International Journal of Health Services 21(3), 441-456 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 1991/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

Health status is directly affected by environmental conditions and by personal health-related behaviors, and it is indirectly affected by environmental conditions that themselves influence health behaviors. A comprehensive approach to health promotion, therefore, should encourage individuals to adopt and maintain personal behaviors that would prevent disease and promote health; discourage health-damaging personal behaviors by individuals and facilitate people engaging in health-promoting behaviors; and eliminate health hazards from the physical and social environment and make that environment more health-promoting. This comprehensive approach would require social and community action to change environmental conditions as well as efforts to change individual behavior. A model of health promotion interventions is developed within which community action plays a central role. The author then presents a model of community organization to influence public policy to achieve health promotion goals. The community organization model, previously tested in comparative case-study research, is illustrated with examples drawn from appropriate health promotion programs.

Cited by

• REVIEW OF COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH: Assessing Partnership Approaches to Improve Public Health
• Outcomes of a peer HIV prevention program with injection drug and crack users: the Risk Avoidance Partnership. [europepmc]
• Changing drug users' risk environments: peer health advocates as multi-level community change agents. [europepmc]
• The Risk Avoidance Partnership: Training Active Drug Users as Peer Health Advocates. [europepmc]
• Challenges, strategies, and lessons learned from a participatory community intervention study to promote female condoms among rural sex workers in Southern China. [europepmc]
• A social network approach to demonstrate the diffusion and change process of intervention from peer health advocates to the drug using community. [europepmc]
• SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMICS OF ENHANCED HIV RISK REDUCTION AMONG PEER INTERVENTIONISTS. [europepmc]
• Translation of the Risk Avoidance Partnership (RAP) for Implementation in Outpatient Drug Treatment Clinics. [europepmc]
• 'Communities are attempting to tackle the crisis': a scoping review on community plans to prevent and reduce opioid-related harms. [europepmc]
• Assessing youth empowerment and co-design to advance Pasifika health: a qualitative research study in New Zealand. [europepmc]
• A multi-level approach to reduce exploding type 2 diabetes in Pakistan. [europepmc]

Related

• Translating Social Ecological Theory into Guidelines for Community Health Promotion
• Health Promotion and Health Education: Theories, Models and Methods
• Critical analysis of interprofessional student-led community health promotion workshops
• Building collective control and improving health through a place-based community empowerment initiative: qualitative evidence from communities seeking agency over their built environment
• Toward an ethic of empowerment for health promotion