Why do we need community-based health promotion?

Abstract

The Ottawa Charter gave an impetus and space to the development of community-based theories and health promotion practices. Since that numerous theories and evidence-based methods have emerged in this field. Some of them were satisfactory in practice and became part of the good practices. There has been intense debate between researchers on the level of community involvement, its ways, characteristics and their connections. These debates led to the clarification of the meaning of community participation and empowerment arriving at the idea of being a continuum. Finally, this became accepted by the WHO European Regional Office as working definition of empowerment. The clarification of community empowerment has practical benefits since it takes into account the important role played by the community in the process of health promotion, therefore, it is hard to overestimate its significance. As a result of this new approach, it is easy to understand that the health of a community merely depends on to what extent the community is able to control risk factors in health. Hungary realized the need for changes and the planned public health reform focuses on the role of communities and community-based empowerment. Therefore, the need arose to summarize the theories related to community involvement. The article makes an attempt to this.