Health challenges for the year 2000: health promotion and AIDS

This article examines how the concept of health promotion can be of value to professionals who have a special responsibility to promote the health of young people and adults. What does it mean to address the issue of AIDS within the broad concept of health promotion? A key message of health promotion is that health cannot be ensured by the health sector alone. The confrontation with AIDS--the new global threat to health--and the response to it with the Global AIDS Strategy have underlined the necessity for a broad involvement of many different sectors of society. Health promotion needs a comprehensive strategy of action oriented towards the development and implementation of various measures concerning the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The five activity areas of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion provide a framework to introduce concrete examples of good practice. The main objective of these activities is the development of personal skills that will enable young people and adults to make choices conducive to health, to cope with problems, to find imaginative solutions, and to become aware of the interdependence that exists between all individuals. This means involvement and participation. In turn, participation opens up on a broad perspective of community action, of supportive environment, and of social public policy. This is the framework of action that the health promotion concept can provide.