[What are the main contexts for intervention and the types of action in health promotion?]. / Quels sont les principaux contextes d'intervention et les types d'action en promotion de la santé?

The overall context is that of the former Director of WHO, Dr Halfdan Mahler, at Ottawa in 1986. "...public health is reinstating itself as a collective effort, drawing together a wide range of actors, institutions and sectors within society towards a goal of 'socially-economically productive life. This social goal moves health from being the outcome measure of social development to being one of its major resources". For this major resource of health to be fully realised, the Ottawa Charter set out a number of fundamental pre-requisites--peace, shelter, food, income, a stable ecosystem, substantial resources, social justice and equity. Health promoters' roles are to: advocate the adoption of the pre-requisites enable all people to achieve their fullest possible health potential through: access to information opportunities to develop life skills possibilities to make healthy choices mediate among different sectors of society in favour of health. These roles underpin the five main interventions proposed by the Ottawa Charter: building healthy public policy; creating supportive environments; strengthening community action; developing personal skills; re-orienting health services. Clearly, each individual health promoter is not expected to do all of these things all of the time. But they are likely to be dependent for their success to a large extent on the roles of other people and those people's ability and willingness to undertake appropriate actions which lie within their power.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Health education in England: a five-year strategy for the Health Education Authority.

The Health Education Authority in England has published its first Strategic Plan, covering the years 1990-1995. The origins and functions of the Authority are described, as are the various factors contributing to the Plan. The strategic objective is defined as being "to ensure that by the year 2,000 the people of England are more knowledgeable, better motivated, and more able to acquire and maintain good health," as suggested by six criteria for program effectiveness. Selected programs include HIV/AIDS, coronary heart disease, cancer, smoking, alcohol, nutrition, and family and child health. Complementary delivery methods are examined, such as use of the mass media, the National Health Service, schools and colleges, and the workplace, utilizing partnerships with health, education, and other agencies, promoting professional development, and dissemination of research and local initiative results.

AIDS: predicting cases nationally and locally.

Models for predicting the future course of the AIDS epidemic can be divided into five types: trend extrapolation models, compartment models, models based on the incubation period, comparison models, and models produced by expert committees. To predict the numbers of cases of AIDS in the United Kingdom and in East Anglia and Cambridge a two stage approach was chosen using trend extrapolation for the national case reports followed by reduction in scale to the two localities. The method predicted that about 2700 cases would be reported nationally during 1990 and about 6000 during 1992. The number of people with AIDS expected to present for treatment in East Anglia during 1990 was 48, and during 1992 was 105; for Cambridge the corresponding figures were 20 and 43. These figures with their estimated 95% confidence intervals will be used for planning local services for people with AIDS, and they emphasise the need for preventive action.