Health Promotion International, Vol. 18, No. 3, 173-175,
September 2003
© Oxford University Press 2003
EDITORIAL |
Health and nature—new challenges for health promotion
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
The time is right for health promoters to take a close look at the evidence of the impacts nature has on the health of individuals and communities. Why? Because we may actually be able to achieve more appropriate and sustainable conditions that support health than if we only address interventions that focus on a particular health issue, e.g. poor diet, sedentary behaviour or drug misuse.
The environment (and nature) have always featured as key components in health promotion models and concepts. Lalonde (Lalonde, 1974
), Hancock and Perkins (Perkins, 1985), Kickbusch (Kickbusch, 1989) and many others incorporated ecological perspectives into their constructs of health. These models have been used to inform the development of health promotion practices and have been largely influential in the shaping of the extensive theoretical designs and implementation strategies of the settings movement (e.g. healthy cities, health promoting schools, health