Proclaimed at the First International Conference on Health Promotion Ottawa, Canada, November 17–21, 1986. Below, some portions of the Charter have been excerpted and others summarized. The full text of the Charter is available via the Internet: http://www.who.dk/policy/ottawa.htm.
Health Promotion
"Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen as a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond healthy lifestyles to well-being.
Prerequisites for Health
"The fundamental conditions and resources for health are peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice, and equity. Improvement in health requires a secure foundation in these basic prerequisites.
Advocate
"Good health is a major resource for social, economic, and personal development and an important dimension of quality of life. Political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral, and biological factors can all favor health or be harmful to it. Health promotion action aims at making these conditions favorable through advocacy for health.
Enable
"Health promotion focuses on achieving equity in health. Health promotion action aims at reducing differences in current health status and ensuring equal opportunities and resources to enable all people to achieve their fullest health potential. This includes a secure foundation in a supportive environment, access to information, life skills, and opportunities for making healthy choices. People cannot achieve their fullest health potential unless they are able to take control of those things which determine their health. This must apply equally to women and men.
Mediate
"The prerequisites and prospects for health cannot be ensured by the health sector alone. More importantly, health promotion demands coordinated
"Health promotion strategies and programs should be adapted to the local needs and possibilities of individual countries and regions to take into account differing social, cultural, and economic systems."
Health Promotion Action Means
The Charter defines health promotion in terms of the following activities: building healthy public policy in the full range of administrative and legislative action; creating supportive environments via a socioecological approach to health; strengthening community action and democratic planning processes; developing personal skills via education; and reorienting health services toward health promotion in addition to curative services.
Moving into the Future
Citing caring, holism, and ecology as central issues, the signatories to the Charter pledged to promote health in various ways, including: advocating a clear political commitment to health and equity in all sectors; counteracting trends and products that harm health; reorienting health services toward health promotion; recognizing health and its maintenance as a major social investment.
Call for International Action
The Charter concludes with a statement calling on the World Health Organization and other international bodies to advocate the promotion of health.
