Health promotion international
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Improving health literacy skills is important for patient comprehension of health-related topics and their ability to attend to their medical problems. Promoting health literacy is a pivotal policy for maintaining and promoting health. The objective of the present study was to translate the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA; long and short versions) into Serbian and evaluate the translated and cross-culturally adapted questionnaires in Serbian primary care patients. ⋯ The area under the curve of these two tests was 0.79 (95% CI, 0.602-0.817). The Serbian translated versions of the TOHFLA questionnaires offer valid measures of functional health literacy. There were no differences between the reliability and validity of the short and long TOFHLA forms.
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New trade agreements affect how governments can regulate for health both within health systems and in addressing health protection, promotion and social determinants of health in other policies. It is essential that those responsible for health understand the impacts of these trade negotiations and agreements on policy space for health at a national and local level. While we know more about implications from negotiations concerning intellectual property rights and trade in goods, this paper provides a screening checklist for less-discussed areas of domestic regulation, services, investment and government procurement. As implications are likely to differ on the basis of the organization and structures of national health systems and policy priorities, the emphasis is on finding out key provisions as well as on how exemptions and exclusions can be used to ensure policy space for health.
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Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach is generally perceived as an intersectoral approach to national or sub-national public policy development, such that health outcomes are given full consideration by non-health sectors. Globalization, however, has created numerous 'inherently global health issues' with cross-border causes and consequences, requiring new forms of global governance for health. Although such governance often includes both state and non-state (private, civil society) actors in agenda setting and influence, different actors have differing degrees of power and authority and, ultimately, it is states that ratify intergovernmental covenants or normative declarations that directly or indirectly affect health. ⋯ A new term has been coined to describe how health is coming to be positioned in governments' foreign policies: global health diplomacy. To become adept at this nuanced diplomatic practice requires familiarity with the different policy frames by which health might be inserted into the foreign policy deliberations, and thence intergovernmental/global governance negotiations. This article discusses six such frames (security, trade, development, global public goods, human rights, ethical/moral reasoning) that have been analytically useful in assessing the potential for greater and more health-promoting foreign policy coherence: a 'Health in All (Foreign) Policies' approach.
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There is a pressing need for low-cost intervention models to promote mental health among children in the wake of natural disasters. This article describes an evaluation of one such model: the Happy/Sad Letter Box (HSLB) Project, a mental health promotion intervention designed to minimize trauma in children, resulting from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004. The HSLB Project was implemented in 68 schools in Sri Lanka's Hambantota District from April 2005 forward. ⋯ The Nairobi Call to Action [WHO (2009) Nairobi Call to Action for Closing the Implementation Gap in Health Promotion. Geneva: World Health Organization] emphasized the importance of mainstreaming health promotion into priority programme areas, specifically including mental health. The HSLB Project represents the integration of health promotion practice into disaster preparedness mental health infrastructure.
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This paper explores the use of health impact assessment (HIA) as a means of facilitating community engagement in spatial planning. The paper discusses the background to the development of HIA as a tool for assessing the likely impact of policies and wider changes on health with a view to building those into planning and decision-making, and describes the evolution of HIA into more participatory forms. ⋯ We discuss the difficulties involved in conducting any kind of research-based HIA so rapidly and in a situation of multiple, competing stakeholder interests. We argue that although the HIA failed to influence the final decisions in this particular instance it does, nonetheless, provide a model for how to create 'knowledge spaces' in which different perspectives and information can be brought around the table to create more democratic approaches to planning for waste.