Health-promoting practices

The National Childhood Immunization Program has proven to he one of the most successful health promotion practices in medicine.The production of disease-specific vaccines has been lauded as one of the second millennium s greatest accomplishments.In spite of this, however, more than 20% of U.S. two-year-olds remain susceptible to preventable illness by not receiving primary... 

We hope that by devoting greater attention to these issues in the future, the field can attain a high degree of confidence that evidence-based prevention and health-promotion practices can be implemented successfully in local schools and a thorough understanding of whether what is being done makes a difference and why. 

Pender, N., Murdaugh, C., Parsons, M. A. (2006). Health promotion in nursing practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall. 

The French pharmaceutical industry association, LEEM, has issued guidelines regarding promotion of medicines. In December 2004 LEEM signed an agreement with the Economic Committee of Health Products (CEPS) regarding the promotional practices of sales representatives. 

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a broad domain of healing resources that encompass all health systems, practices, accompanying theories and beliefs, other than those intrinsic to the politically dominant health system of a particular society or culture, within a defined historical period. CAM includes all such practices and ideas self-defined by their users for prevention or treatment of disease, or promotion of health and well being. Boundaries within CAM and between the CAM domain and that of the dominant system are not always sharp or fixed . 

With this federal government support, professional pharmacy bodies have established practice standards, measurable performance indicators, and pharmacy accreditation programs. The standards address health promotion, drug dispensing, dose administration aids, patient counseling, compounding, medication reviews, comprehensive pharmaceutical care, drug information services, liaison pharmacy, and pharmacy services in residential care facilities. 

In all this process, the pharmacist has traditionally been associated to health protection activities. More recently, however, everyone agrees on the pharmacist s role in the field of health promotion and disease prevention the pharmacist should incorporate, in daily practice, screenings and health advice for the people attended to in the pharmacy. 

In practice, health promotion from the community pharmacy has been described in different studies published since 1950, although more frequently since 1980 and, specifically, in studies conducted in England and Canada. 

In 1993, the Health Education Authority and the National Pharmaceutical Association published Health Promotion and the Community Pharmacist ,which serves as a practical guide for all health promotion activities that can be carried out by British pharmacists from the community pharmacy. 

Health promotions activities in primary health care, in general practice and in community pharmacy, is not yet well documented or evaluated with sufficiently high quality standards. There seems to be a wide variance in the degree to which health-promoting services, projects, and programs are documented, evaluated, and evidence based. In particular, there seems to be need for further work concerning lifestyle counseling, health education, and interventions for health development. 

The need to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities is obvious. Therefore, it will be essential to specify, during the process of implementing health promotion at the pharmacy, what the particular objectives are and which activities must be carried out, while ensuring that the former are attainable and the latter feasible on the basis of the resources available. It will be necessary to plan a careful implementation strategy that will ensure the participation of as many professionals as possible while also permitting evaluation of the repercussions, on the population s health, of the integration of health promotion activities into the pharmacist s practice. 

Krajic, K. Health Promotion in Primary Health Care General Practice and Community Pharmacy, A European Project. In Opportunities, Models, Experiences Ludwig Boltzmann-lnstitute for the Sociology of Health and Medicine, April 2001. 

United States Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM), Standard Practice for Wildlife Toxicity Reference Values, Technical Guide 254, U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, USA, 2000. 

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