Health promotion through the lens of population health: Toward a salutogenic setting

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Abstract
While strong currents within health promotion have attempted to move the field beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards one that examines the contribution of social environments on health, the tendency is often to fall back on individual behaviour modification as the primary lever for change. The Population Health research agenda bypasses behavioural determinants of health and explores instead the role of social determinants. This body of knowledge provides useful insight for addressing some of the tensions in the health promotion discourse. This paper explores two of these tensions: whether individuals at risk or general populations should be targeted for change; and whether lifestyle is an individual or a collective attribute. Merging the resolution of these tensions with Aaron Antonovsky's salutogenic model, this paper develops the concepts of collective lifestyles and salutogenic settings for future theoretical development in health promotion and public health.

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