Assignment: Theories Of Health Promotion

Assignment: Theories Of Health Promotion
Assignment: Theories Of Health Promotion
Discuss various theories of health promotion, including Pender’s Health Promotion Model, the Health Belief Model, the Transtheoretical Theory, and the Theory of Reasoned Action.
Discuss definitions of health.
Critically analyze racial and cultural diversity in the United States.
Describe the importance of air, water and food quality as a determinant of health.
The Chadwick Report Edwin Chadwick became a major figure in the development of the field of public health in Great Britain by drawing attention to the cost of the unsanitary conditions that shortened the life span of the laboring class and threatened the wealth of Britain. Although the first sanitation legislation, which established a National Vaccination Board, was passed in 1837, Chadwick found in his classic study, Report on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, that death rates were high in large industrial cities, such as Liverpool. A more startling finding, from what is often referred to simply as the Chadwick Report, was that more than half the children of labor-class workers died by age 5, indicating poor living conditions that affected the health of the most vulnerable. Laborers lived only half as long as the upper classes.
One consequence of the report was the establishment in 1848 of the first board of health, the General Board of Health for England (Richardson, 1887). More legislation followed that initiated social reform in the areas of child welfare, elder care, the sick, mentally ill persons, factory health, and education. Soon sewers and fireplugs, based on an available water supply, appeared as indicators that the public health linkages from the Chadwick Report had an effect.
The Shattuck Report In the United States during the 1800s, waves of epidemics of yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, and typhus continued to plague the population as in England
and the rest of the world. As cities continued to grow in the industrialized young nation, poor workers crowded into larger cities and suffered from illnesses caused by the unsanitary living conditions (Hanlon & Pickett, 1984). Similar to Chadwick’s classic study in England, Lemuel Shattuck, a Boston bookseller and publisher who had an interest in public health, organized the American Statistical Society in 1839 and issued a census of Boston in 1845. Shattuck’s census revealed high infant mortality rates and high overall population mortality rates. In 1850, in his Report of the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission, Shattuck not only outlined his findings on the unsanitary conditions but also made recommendations for public health reform that included the bookkeeping of population statistics and development of a monitoring system that would provide information to the public about environmental, food, and drug safety and infectious disease control (Rosen, 1958). He also called for services for well-child care, school-age children’s health, immunizations, mental health, health education for all, and health planning. The Shattuck Report was revolutionary in its scope and vision for public health, but it was virtually ignored during Shattuck’s lifetime. Nineteen years later, in 1869, the first state board of health was formed (Kalisch & Kalisch, 1986).
And Then There Was Nightingale . . . Florence Nightingale (Figure 1-1) was named one of the 100 most influential persons of the last millennium by Life magazine (“The 100 People Who Made the Millennium,” 1997). She was one of only eight women identified as such. Of those eight women, including Joan of Arc, Helen Keller, and Elizabeth I, Nightingale was identified as a true “angel of mercy,” having reformed military health care in the Crimean War and used her political savvy to forever change the way society views the health of the vulnerable, the poor, and the forgotten. She is probably one of the most written about women in history (Bullough & Bullough, 1978). Florence Nightingale has become synonymous with modern nursing.
Figure 1-1 Engraving From 1873 featuring the English reformer and founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.
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Born on May 12, 1820, in her n