Health Promotion Practice: Building Empowered Communities

This book explains theoretical principles and practical approaches that have been used by health promoters to intentionally build and evaluate empowerment. It provides a special focus on communities and is illustrated throughout with field experiences from the United Kingdom, Asia, North America, the Pacific region and Africa.

The book attempts to answer the questions: How can health promotion practitioners help communities to become more empowered? How do you encourage different communities to work together towards a shared goal? How can you focus your resources to be most effective in building empowered communities? How do you evaluate your success (and failures) in building empowered communities? The book aims to provide the reader with:

• An understanding of the key concepts of power and empowerment and the link to improved health outcomes in the context of health promotion programmes;
• An understanding of practical approaches that can be used in health promotion programming to build and evaluate empowered communities; and
• Case study examples of how communities can be empowered in practice.

Table of Contents:
Preface
An overview of the book
Health promotion practice
Communities and community based interaction
Health and empowerment
Empowerment and health promotion programming
'Unpacking’ community empowerment for strategic planning
Evaluating community empowerment
Empowerment in action: An issues based approach
Empowerment in action: A community based approach
Building empowered communities in health promotion practice
Index
Bibliography