Health Promotion is … the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health.

                                                                                                                                           World Health Organization

Introducing Integral Health Promotion

Integral Health Promotion is a comprehensive and practical response to emerging goals and priorities in the field of health promotion and education.

The Integral Health Promotion approach features a salutogenic* policy and practice framework that fosters health, well-being and healthy development in individuals and in diverse populations. Using an integral lens to enrich, expand, and more effectively engage an existing field of research, discourse, policy and practice, the Integral Health Promotion approach integrates five foundational components for generating and enhancing higher levels of health:
1.    Health-generating assets;
2.    Integral leadership;
3.    Leveraging community contribution;
4.    Cultivating human potential; and
5.    Integral capacity building.

Integral Health Promotion acknowledges the interconnections and mutual influences among multiple determinants of health: social, economic, environmental, physical, psychological, spiritual and cultural. This comprehensive approach enhances current capacities of governments, organizations and communities to address health inequities, and to promote healthy people in healthy communities.  

Health Promotion through an Integral Lens 

Meeting health promotion targets is no easy task. And there’s no easy solution. But in Canada, the US, and around the world there’s a groundswell of commitment to become the healthiest we can.  We know that the task ahead is complex and that our toolkits must be sufficiently comprehensive to address that complexity. But health promotion practitioners and policy makers are discovering a helpful tool: the Integral Framework.   

The Integral approach is gaining global recognition, influencing thought and practice leaders in multiple disciplines from medicine to education, from sustainability to politics. The integral framework provides a map that reflects the complexity of communities, and of the contexts in which health promotion is carried out, paying attention to all of the factors that influence health, well-being and healthy development throughout the lifecourse.

The Integral approach supports professionals, community leaders, and grassroots citizens to work collaboratively to build the assets that generate health and well-being, and the assets that promote healthy human development.  Integral means “comprehensive, inclusive, balanced … not leaving anything out.”  In health promotion, not leaving anything out means paying attention to all of the determinants of health: social, economic, environmental, physical, psychological, spiritual and cultural.  It means that our health promotion efforts will be most effective and most sustainable when they address the whole person in the whole community.



Integral Health Promotion: A Whole Systems Approach

At West Coast Integral Initiatives we support health promoters and educators working in organizational and community settings. We also support regional and province/state-wide health promotion initiatives. In each of these contexts, an integral approach creates greater alignment between vision, action and outcome – generating higher levels of health in people and communities. The integral approach doesn’t “re-invent” health promotion. Rather, it contributes an integrative thinking and practice framework that enriches, expands, and more effectively engages an existing field of research, discourse, policy and practice. In other words, the integral approach is a “value-added” approach.

Starting with a Few Key Assumptions:

•    We move closer to the goal of healthy people in healthy communities when we pay as much attention to generating health as we do to preventing disease. We need a salutogenic focus: generating or enhancing higher levels of health.   
•    The complexity of our times requires innovative and integrative thinking to guide our actions.  For example, most current theories of change fail to account for the full complexity of human experience, including human interiority and human development.  We need a more complete map.
•    Healthy human development is a core attribute of a healthy community. Leaders and capacity builders increasingly recognize the need for developmental awareness and attentiveness.
•    Communities – from local citizens to government – play an essential role in fostering health-generating assets, and in reaching health promotion goals. As the World Health Organization recently reiterated, community participation is the basis of effective health promotion.
•    Healthy people and healthy communities demonstrate high degrees of response-ability, the capacity to respond to a need or an opportunity, a problem or a potential.
•    With an integral leadership lens, health promoters and community leaders enhance their capacity to foster health, well-being and healthy human development in diverse settings.

Highlights of Integral Health Promotion

•    A meta-level salutogenic framework for generating and enhancing higher levels of health, in people and in communities.
•    An integral policy lens adds depth and connectivity to healthy public and private policy initiatives.
•    Integral Capacity Building fosters healthy human development, a key factor in generating increased health and well-being.
•    The Integral Capacity Building model supports practitioners with practical tools to address all determinants of health, well-being and health development: social, economic, environmental, physical, psychological, spiritual and cultural.
•    Integral Health Promotion fosters response-ability – the capacity to respond to complex challenges.
•    The contributions of community members are leveraged through meaningful engagement and collaboration, catalyzing health-generating assets and positive change.

 

* Salutogenic means "health-generating". With a salutogenic orientation to guide our thinking and practice, we pay attention to the factors that generate higher levels of health, well-being and healthy development - in people, in communities, and in the environment we all share.