The “Health Promoting University”: a critical exploration of theory and practice

Abstract

The settings-based approach to health promotion The settings-based approach to health promotion has its roots in the World Health Organisation (WHO)``Health for All'' initiative (WHO, 1980, 1985, 1991, 1998a) and Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, 1986). The latter, which drew on both``Health for All'' and the work of theorists concerned with the creation of positive health ± what Antonovsky (1987, 1996) has called``salutogenic'' research ± reflected a growing consensus that health is a socio-ecological product that can be developed most effectively and efficiently by investing outside of the healthcare sector. The Charter stated that: Health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love. Health is created by caring for oneself and others, by being able to take decisions and have control over one's life circumstances, and by ensuring that the society one lives in creates conditions that allow the attainment of health by all its members. With its five-fold focus on healthy public policy, the creation of environments supportive to health, strengthening community action, developing personal skills and reorienting health services, the Ottawa Charter served as a catalyst to shift health promotion away from problems (as characterised by particular behaviours or by specific at-risk groups) and towards environments and settings. This shift is also reflected in recent work on``investment for health'' (Levin and Ziglio, 1996; Ziglio et al., 2000), developed through the Verona Initiative (http://www.who.dk/verona/main.htm). The first and perhaps best known initiative that has been retrospectively labelled settingsbased health promotion is Healthy Cities. Initiated as a small WHO project in 1986, with the aim of taking the rhetoric of Health for All and the Ottawa Charter``off the shelves and into the streets of European cities'' (Ashton, 1988, p. 1232), Healthy Cities rapidly grew to become a major global movement for the new public health (Tsouros, 1991). Drawing on this``macrolevel'' experience, parallel initiatives were established during the late 1980s and early The author

Theorizing healthy settings: a critical discussion with reference to Healthy Universities

“…26 references -relating to the UK, China, Germany, Hong Kong and the USA -conformed to the inclusion criteria. Of these, 15 were authored or co-authored by Dooris or Dooris et al [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] and a further seven cited Dooris or Dooris et al [24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. This reflects the relative youth of Healthy Universities as a movement and there was, not surprisingly, a high degree of congruence amongst the papers with regard to the theories and conceptual frameworks deployed.…”

“…Drawing on settings-focused literature by Baríc [36] and Grossman and Scala [37], universities have also been conceptualised as social systems, with inputs, processes and outputs [8,12]. As systems, they are understood to be made up of multiple interconnected parts -which can be considered in terms of components; micro-environments; sub-populations or stakeholder groups; and health issues and their determinants [5,15].…”

Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors and Health Promotion Attitudes in Preregistered Nurses: A Questionnaire Study

“…In the UK, the 'Health Promoting University' initiative -a settings-based approach to 413 health promotion within universities was proposed over 15 years ago (Dooris, 2001) …”

The Application of Salutogenesis in Universities

“…The work explicitly seeks to apply a settings approach, which is clearly rooted in salutogenic theory (Kickbusch, 1996). His 'social ecosystem' model (Dooris, 2001) identified inputs, processes and outputs and illustrated how Healthy Universities offers a means of investing in the health and well-being of students and staff. It is argued that this can be done by balancing a traditional pathogenic focus on addressing health needs and problems with a salutogenic focus on harnessing a university's strengths, assets and potentials in order to support the well-being and flourishing of students, staff and the wider community.…”

“…This research links well with the whole system perspective of Healthy Universities, acknowledging the importance of a university's ethos and culture and discussing how individuals interact with and feel part of it-in this instance leading to learning around conditions conducive to mental health across an organisation. Dooris (1998Dooris ( , 1999Dooris ( , 2001) draws on the early experience of developing and implementing the University of Central Lancashire's Health Promoting University initiative to describe and discuss the framing of a whole system approach and the successes and challenges. The work explicitly seeks to apply a settings approach, which is clearly rooted in salutogenic theory (Kickbusch, 1996).…”