Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion World Health Organization 1986

This document resulted from the World Health Organization’s first International Conference on Health Promotion, held in Ottawa in 1986.

Document Highlights:

Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment.

Health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond healthy lifestyles to well-being. Health promotion demands coordinated action by all concerned.

The fundamental conditions and resources for health are peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice and equity.

Political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral, and biological factors can all favor health or be harmful to it. Health promotion action aims at making these conditions favorable through advocacy.

Five action areas for health promotion Building healthy public policy

• Creating supportive environments
• Strengthening community actions
• Developing personal skills
• Re-orienting health care services toward prevention of illness and promotion of health

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Health Promoting Universities: Concept, Experience, and Framework for Action World Health Organization— Europe 1998

Based on two conferences, this book is a working document that explores, visualizes and develops the health-promoting potential of universities.

Book Highlights:

A health promoting university takes a settings-based approach to health promotion

• Recognizes the campus as an environment in which people live and work
• Operationalizes an ecological approach

Policy and systems changes are key

• “The concept of the health-promoting university means much more than conducting health education and health promotion for students and staff. It means integrating health into the culture, processes and policies of the university.”

How campuses that do this work matter

Planning is both visionary and pragmatic

• It is essential to balance “the development of long-term strategic plans with short-term deliverables…through a series of carefully chosen projects...”
• A participatory approach is key
• The goal is “…integrated approaches to health policy and planning based on participation and cooperation across sectors and departments….”

Collaborative planning leads to innovation, e.g.,

• Tackling problems or issues in new ways
• Legitimizing action on newly-appreciated issues
• Seeking new ways of working, decision-making, and making policy and planning

Importance of developing infrastructure “…participation and cooperation… cannot be implemented without creating…”

• Enabling mechanisms
• The capacity for managing and implementing the project.”

“Integrating health…into the university culture and creating horizontal cooperation and decision-making processes is a long-term process.”

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Healthy Campus Program— American College Health Association

This document resulted from the World Health Organization’s first International Conference on Health Promotion, held in Ottawa in 1986.

ACHA’s Healthy Campus program aims to empower campus communities to improve health and well-being by helping them to:

• Become the cornerstone of the campus by striving toward health equity and eliminating health disparities.
• Support a community that increases academic success, student and faculty/staff retention, and life-long learning.
• Create a culture where social and physical environments promote health.

Healthy Campus: Core Elements

• Healthy Campus is a continuum
• Comprehensive health programs for students
• Institutions of Higher Education are communities
• College health program should be the leader of health on campus
• Every campus has a place
• Long-term sustainable efforts
• Assessment
• Leadership

Healthy Campus 2020 has evolved to include national health objectives for students and faculty/staff; promote an action model using an ecological approach; and provide a toolkit for implementation based on the MAP-IT (Mobilize, Assess, Plan, Implement and Track) framework

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Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities and Colleges 2015

This document resulted from the 2015 International Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges in British Columbia, Canada. It built on prior work including the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and the 2005 Edmonton Charter for Health Promoting Universities and IHEs.

Document Highlights:

The Okanagan Charter set out “a transformative vision for health promoting universities & colleges.”

Shared aspirations:

• Operationalizes an ecological approach

Policy and systems changes are key

• “Health promoting universities and colleges infuse health into everyday operations, business practices and academic mandates. By doing so, health promoting universities and colleges enhance the success of our institutions; create campus cultures of compassion, well-being, equity and social justice; improve the health of the people who live, learn, work, play and love on our campuses; and strengthen the ecological, social and economic sustainability of our communities and wider society.”

Themes carried forward from prior work

• Health is holistic, reflecting physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
• Health promotion requires a positive, proactive approach, moving beyond a focus on individual behavior towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions that create and enhance health in settings, organizations and systems, and address health determinants.
• Collaborative and multi-sectoral effort are essential.
• Health promotion must take an explicit stance in favor of equity, social justice, and sustainability.

Key principles for action

• Use settings and whole system approaches
• Ensure comprehensive and campus-wide approaches
• Use participatory approaches and engage the voice of students and others
• Develop trans-disciplinary collaborations and cross-sector partnerships
• Promote research, innovation and evidence-informed action
• Build on strengths
• Value local and indigenous communities’ contexts and priorities
• Act on an existing universal responsibility

An Action Framework for Higher Education Institutions

Embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across the administration, operations and academic mandates Embed health in all campus policies

• Create supportive campus environments
• Generate thriving communities and a culture of well-being
• Support personal development
• Create or re-orient campus services

An action framework for higher education institutions

• Integrate health, well-being and sustainability in multiple disciplines to develop change agents
• Advance research, teaching and training for health promotion knowledge and action
• Lead and partner towards local and global action for health promotion

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Standards of Practice for Health Promotion in Higher Education—American College Health Association 2019

Health promotion is a field that focuses on “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health” (World Health Organization, 1986, para. 3). It involves more than sharing information or materials, “health promotion requires a positive, proactive approach, moving ‘beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions’” (Okanagan Charter, 2015, p. 4) aimed at addressing the root causes of various health conditions (WHO, 2016).

By using evidence to identify and address the factors that contribute to a community’s well-being, such as physical facilities, policies, traditions, demographics, geography, etc., health promotion professionals are able to prioritize the well-being of all members of the community (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, 2016).

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