[What are the main contexts for intervention and the types of action in health promotion?]

The overall context is that of the former Director of WHO, Dr Halfdan Mahler, at Ottawa in 1986. "...public health is reinstating itself as a collective effort, drawing together a wide range of actors, institutions and sectors within society towards a goal of 'socially-economically productive life. This social goal moves health from being the outcome measure of social development to being one of its major resources". For this major resource of health to be fully realised, the Ottawa Charter set out a number of fundamental pre-requisites--peace, shelter, food, income, a stable ecosystem, substantial resources, social justice and equity. Health promoters' roles are to: advocate the adoption of the pre-requisites enable all people to achieve their fullest possible health potential through: access to information opportunities to develop life skills possibilities to make healthy choices mediate among different sectors of society in favour of health. These roles underpin the five main interventions proposed by the Ottawa Charter: building healthy public policy; creating supportive environments; strengthening community action; developing personal skills; re-orienting health services. Clearly, each individual health promoter is not expected to do all of these things all of the time. But they are likely to be dependent for their success to a large extent on the roles of other people and those people's ability and willingness to undertake appropriate actions which lie within their power.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)