Health Promoting Hospitals
The International Network of Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services (HPH) is a network initiated by the World Health Organization - Regional Office for Europe. It is based on the health promotion philosophy of the World Health Organization (WHO) as outlined in the WHO Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO 1986) which was re-confirmed in the WHO Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion in a Globalised World (WHO 2005). The Ottawa Charter lists five action areas for health promotion, of which health care services are one:
The responsibility for health promotion in health services is shared among individuals, community groups, health professionals, health service institutions and governments. They must work together towards a health care system which contributes to the pursuit of health. The role of the health sector must move increasingly in a health promotion direction, beyond its responsibility for providing clinical and curative services. Health services need to embrace an expanded mandate which is sensitive and respects cultural needs. This mandate should support the needs of individuals and communities for a healthier life, and open channels between the health sector and broader social, political, economic and physical environmental components. Reorienting health services also requires stronger attention to health research as well as changes in professional education and training. This must lead to a change of attitude and organization of health services which refocuses on the total needs of the individual as a whole person. (Ottawa Charter, WHO 1986)
Accordingly, HPHs aim at improving the health gain of hospitals (and other health services) by a bundle of strategies targeting
- patients
- staff and
- the community
Read more about Health Promoting Hospitals: Short History of HPH, HPH: The Concept, HPH Structure
Famous quotes containing the words health, promoting and/or hospitals:
“To be stupid and selfish and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”
—Gustave Flaubert (18211880)
“The historians job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to portent.”
—Peter Conrad (b. 1948)
“Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than is now worshiped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)