Title: At the cutting edge or the center of the storm? Innovation in public health through health promotion and education in state health departments.
Abstract: Health promotion and education components of state health agencies are at the center of the application of modern public health practice. Two reports on the future of public health, issued 15 years apart, detailed the changing nature and systemic problems of public health in the late 20th century (1) and identified the challenges in improving the public's health as we head into the 21st century (2). State health agencies — in collaboration with federal partners, community organizations, and health care systems — clearly play a critical role in ensuring the public's health. In response to these contemporary public health issues, the health promotion and education components of state health agencies have rapidly evolved, gaining the capacity to address newly recognized public health problems and become key players in ensuring that community and public health problems are addressed through cutting-edge public health strategies. These strategies include community mobilization, coalition building, and community-based interventions; integration of policy advocacy and media advocacy into comprehensive interventions; collaborations with academic institutions and other partners to advance the translation of research into practice; and the adoption of the social–ecological approach to public health interventions, in which the interplay of multiple interventions at multiple levels of society combine to provide the impact necessary to address deep problems.
This issue of Preventing Chronic Disease highlights several innovative health promotion and education initiatives conducted by state health agencies, showing not only the breadth of public health issues addressed by these agencies but also the scope of complex strategic issues undertaken by the leadership of these organizations.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['pubmed']
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