Upending the social ecological model to guide health promotion efforts toward policy and environmental change

© 2015 Society for Public Health Education..

Efforts to change policies and the environments in which people live, work, and play have gained increasing attention over the past several decades. Yet health promotion frameworks that illustrate the complex processes that produce health-enhancing structural changes are limited. Building on the experiences of health educators, community activists, and community-based researchers described in this supplement and elsewhere, as well as several political, social, and behavioral science theories, we propose a new framework to organize our thinking about producing policy, environmental, and other structural changes. We build on the social ecological model, a framework widely employed in public health research and practice, by turning it inside out, placing health-related and other social policies and environments at the center, and conceptualizing the ways in which individuals, their social networks, and organized groups produce a community context that fosters healthy policy and environmental development. We conclude by describing how health promotion practitioners and researchers can foster structural change by (1) conveying the health and social relevance of policy and environmental change initiatives, (2) building partnerships to support them, and (3) promoting more equitable distributions of the resources necessary for people to meet their daily needs, control their lives, and freely participate in the public sphere.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2015

Erschienen:

2015

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:42

Enthalten in:

Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education - 42(2015), 1 Suppl vom: 15. Apr., Seite 8S-14S

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Golden, Shelley D [VerfasserIn]
McLeroy, Kenneth R [VerfasserIn]
Green, Lawrence W [VerfasserIn]
Earp, Jo Anne L [VerfasserIn]
Lieberman, Lisa D [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Editorial
Environmental change
Public policy
Social ecological model
Structural interventions

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 13.01.2016

Date Revised 01.04.2015

published: Print

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1177/1090198115575098

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM247621447