Dancing with death : risk, health promotion and injecting drug users

The thesis investigated ambivalent attitudes towards death in injecting drug users, factors that may lead to such ambivalent attitudes and implications for health promotion campaigns. It was found that this relationship with death was principally attributable to government drug policy in Australia.

Building health promotion capacity in the workforce : participatory action research

This study used participatory action research to describe and analyse the elements of building health promotion capacity in a primary health care workforce in an urban community health setting, reinforcing the importance of provider informed evidence. It presents an integrated model for health promotion and capacity building in the workforce.

Theories of the policy process in health promotion research: a review

The Ottawa Charter laid the ground work for a new research and practice agenda by urging health promoters to advocate for healthy public policies. After more than 20 years, it is now time to reflect on the state of policy research in health promotion and to examine how rigorously theories are applied. The review of the literature was
conducted on 11 peer-reviewed journals. The journals were selected for their solid track record in publishing health promotion articles and by using a set of predefined
inclusion and exclusion criteria. The articles, published between January 1986 and June 2006, were searched using Medline and CINAHL databases. The selected papers feature search terms related to ‘politics’, ‘policy’, ‘advocacy’ and ‘coalition’. We examined the theoretical grounding of each paper and whether it focuses on policy content (e.g. nature, impact, evolution of the policy), policy processes (e.g. advocacy capacity building and strategies) or theoretical/methodological issues in policy analysis. This review demonstrates that policy research in health promotion is still largely an a theoretical enterprise. Out of the 119 articles that were found eligible, 39 did apply to some degree a theoretical framework, of which 21 referred to a theoretical framework from political science. We conclude that the field has yet to acknowledge critical concepts that would help to shed light on the policy process, and that validated rigorous theoretical frameworks to inform research and practice are hardly applied. Recommendations are formulated to improve policy research in health promotion.

Reliability assessments in qualitative health promotion research

This article contributes to the debate about the use of reliability assessments in qualitative research in general, and health promotion research in particular. In this article, I examine the use of reliability assessments in qualitative health promotion research in response to health promotion researchers’ commonly held misconception that reliability assessments improve the rigor of qualitative research. All qualitative articles published in the journal Health Promotion International from 2003 to 2009 employing reliability assessments were examined. In total, 31.3% (20/64) articles employed some form of reliability assessment. The use of reliability assessments increased over the study period, ranging from ,20% in 2003/2004 to 50% and above in 2008/2009, while at the same time the total number of qualitative articles decreased. The articles were then classified into four types of reliability assessments, including the verification of thematic codes, the use of inter-rater reliability statistics, congruence in team coding and congruence in coding across sites. The merits of each type were discussed, with the subsequent discussion focusing on the deductive nature of reliable thematic coding, the limited depth of immediately verifiable data and the usefulness of such studies to health promotion and the advancement of the qualitative paradigm.

Football's culture of intoxication : implications for health promotion

Objectives: The objective of this is article is to examine some of the strategies and interventions designed to encourage responsible alcohol consumption within Australian Rules football clubs.
Design: Qualitative research was undertaken with fans of four fans of football teams who compete in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). In total, 93 interviews were conducted with male (80) and female (13) fans across these clubs. Interview data were thematically analysed with the assistance of the NVIVO software package. To elicit additional insight about the social meanings of drinking, researchers visited football games and a range of social functions.
Results: Analysis of the qualitative data suggests that formal interventions implemented by football clubs often prove ineffectual in encouraging responsible alcohol consumption, with more effective strategies aimed at dissuading heavy drinking being operationalized at an informal level by drinkers themselves through a number of ‘everyday’ or ‘lay’ strategies. Such strategies correspond to the broad analytical categories of ‘keeping safe’, ‘minimising damage’ and ‘taking charge’.
Conclusion: This focus on the role of lay strategies in informing health behaviours makes an important contribution to how we understand health promotion initiatives in relation to harmful drinking in sport and other contexts.

Core health promotion competencies in Australia : are they compatible with climate change action?

Issues addressed: Health promotion principles for practice are closely aligned with that of environmental sustainability. Health promotion practitioners are well positioned to take action on climate change. However, there has been scant discussion about practice synergies and subsequently the type and nature of professional competencies that underpin such action.

Methods: This commentary uses the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA) national core competencies for Health Promotion Practitioners as a basis to examine the synergies between climate change and health promotion action.

Results: We demonstrate that AHPA core competencies, such as program planning, evaluation and partnership building, are highly compatible for implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. We use food security examples to illustrate this case.

Conclusions: There appears to be considerable synergy between climate change and health promotion action. This should be a key focus of future health promotion competency development in Australia.

It's here! Are we ready? Five case studies of health promotion practices that address climate change from within Victorian health care settings

Issue addressed: Climate changes and environmental degradation caused by anthropogenic activities are having an irrefutable impact on human health. The critical role played by health promotion in addressing environmental challenges has a history in seminal charters − such as the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion − that explicitly link human well-being with the natural environment. The lack of documented practice in this field prompted an investigation of health promotion practice that addresses climate change issues within health care settings.

Methods: This qualitative study involved five case studies of Victorian health care agencies that explicitly identified climate change as a priority. Individual and group interviews with ten health promotion funded practitioners as well as document analysis techniques were used to explore diverse practices across these rural, regional and urban health care agencies.

Results: Health promotion practice in these agencies was oriented toward: active and sustainable transport; healthy and sustainable food supply; mental health and community resilience; engaging vulnerable population groups such as women; and organisational development.

Conclusion: Despite differences in approach, target population and context, the core finding was that health promotion strategies, competencies and frameworks were transferable to action on climate change in these health care settings.

Health promotion and climate change : exploring the core competencies required for action

Climate change poses serious threats to human health and well-being. It exacerbates existing health inequities, impacts on the social determinants of health and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations. In the Australian region these include remote Aboriginal communities, Pacific Island countries and people with low incomes. Given health promotion’s remit to protect and promote health, it should be well placed to respond to emerging climate-related health challenges. Yet, to date, there has been little evidence to demonstrate this. This paper draws on the findings of a qualitative study conducted in Victoria, Australia to highlight that; while there is clearly a role for health promotion in climate change mitigation and adaptation at the national and international levels, there is also a need for the engagement of health promoters at the community level. This raises several key issues for health promotion practice. To be better prepared to respond to climate change, health promotion practitioners first need to re-engage with the central tenets of the Ottawa Charter, namely the interconnectedness of humans and the natural environment and, secondly, the need to adopt ideas and frameworks from the sustainability field. The findings also open up a discussion for paradigmatic shifts in health promotion thinking and acting in the context of climate change.