Health promotion and environmental management: a partnership for the future

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Abstract
Health Promotion as a professional practice is facing its third major challenge this century. To the infectious diseases of the past and the lifestyle risks of the present have been added the global environmental hazards of the future. Each wave of health risk has three things in common. The first is that ill-health results from a change in the relationship between the environment and society. The second is that the ill-health so caused falls predominantly on already disadvantaged groups in the community. Third in each case there is a tune lag of two or more decades between recognition of the fresh risks to health and effective professional response. The challenge today is to shorten the lead time for responding to the third phase, the degradation of the global environment. This will give a radical reorientation to the field of health promotion, which has traditionally safe guarded the health of people from environmental change, not vice versa. The reorientation of health promotion is discussed in terms of the contributions which health promotion can make to environmental management. The options for managing environmental change are identified as protection, prevention, resilience and adaptation. These strategies are already in use in the different branches of health promotion.

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