Health Promotion and Community Engagement

Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health. Health promotion is a core component of public health practice, and in this unit students will advance their knowledge of health promotion by evaluating theoretical approaches, examining the models of health behaviour on which many health promotion strategies are based, and selecting appropriate health promotion strategies. The emphasis in this unit of study will be on taking a theoretically informed approach to interpret, justify and select health promotion strategies to achieve sustainable health gains across a range of global and local settings. Students will develop advanced knowledge of working with socially and culturally diverse groups, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through taking a community engagement and place-based approach to health promotion practice.