Health promotion emerged at the close of the 20th century, unifying diverse fields of study, and at the beginning of the 21st has become an essential means of delivering public health. This text provides an introduction to the multidisciplinary roots of health promotion and examines how different disciplines inform current research and practice. The first edition of the book published in 1992 and examined this important aspect of health promotion and public health discourse. The second edition takes into account developments in the interim and adds three new disciplines: politics, ethics and genetics. In this book, leading authors outline the individual contributions of their disciplines to health promotion and the past and current concerns that are influencing developments. Included are disciplines that have made a major contribution to the field, such as psychology, sociology and epidemiology, as well as those that have made an important, if lesser, contribution, such as social policy, economics and genetics. This volume offers an up-to-date introduction to the field of health promotion.
Its multidisciplinary and theoretically grounded approach makes it appropriate for a broad range of academic and professional courses concerned with health matters, and for undergraduate and postgraduate students and professionals in the broad field of health and nursing.