Community Health Empowerment in the Chinese Cultural Context: A Hybrid Concept Analysis

The purpose of this study was to define the concept of health empowerment within the community and explore its key characteristics.

In this study, the concept was formulated utilizing the hybrid model proposed by Schwartz-Barcott and Kim. In the theoretical phase, comprehensive searches were conducted on PubMed, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, Wanfang Data, and SinoMed to gather relevant articles. In the fieldwork stage, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten community workers and fifteen community residents, and the collected data were thoroughly analyzed using routine content analysis techniques. During the final analysis stage, the insights gained from both the theoretical and fieldwork stages were seamlessly integrated.

In the theoretical stage, the five attributes of community health empowerment include community participation, policy support, resource acquisition and utilization, cooperation and partnership, self-care, and health decision-making. Antecedents include social support, communication and cooperation, resource mobilization, health knowledge popularization and perceived control. Its consequences include improvements in personal health and life, increased awareness of self-care, and enhanced identity and belonging to the community. Attributes of community health empowerment in the field interview stage: community participation and interaction, community capacity, information exchange, and sharing. Its Antecedents include community organization services, support networks (social structures), health beliefs, policy support, and sustainability. Consequences include process outcomes, health outcomes, and community outcomes. In the final analysis stage, we concluded that community health empowerment is a multi-level process involving individuals, communities, and society as a whole.

In the context of Chinese culture, community health empowerment is a two-way interactive process of health power between communities. Through community health empowerment, it is not only able to improve individual autonomy and decision-making, as well as self-health management abilities, but also able to enhance community cohesion and promote sustainable community development.