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Health promotion and secondary prevention: response to Milat, O'Hara and Develin
Author(s) -
Fry Denise,
Gleeson Suzanne,
Rissel Chris
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
health promotion journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.515
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 2201-1617
pISSN - 1036-1073
DOI - 10.1071/he10086
Subject(s) - health promotion , population health , upstream (networking) , medicine , public relations , population , public health , health policy , type 2 diabetes , promotion (chess) , workforce , community health , nursing , environmental health , business , political science , economic growth , economics , engineering , diabetes mellitus , telecommunications , politics , law , endocrinology
This paper responds to a recent HPJA article by Milat, O'Hara and Develin, which called for health promotion practitioners to be more closely involved in secondary prevention of Type 2 diabetes. It considers the resources currently available to health promotion in Australia, and examines and critiques the terminology of prevention used by Milat et al. The paper argues that Milat et al. give insufficient attention to the central role of social determinants of health in preventing Type 2 diabetes and in reducing health inequalities in the population. The paper agrees that increased health promotion involvement in Type 2 diabetes prevention programs may be beneficial, but argues that funds for such programs should come from the services that run them, not from the tiny health promotion budget. Given the current and projected scale of Type 2 diabetes in Australia, there is value in applying the concept of ‘moving upstream’ to this health issue. The paper concludes that, given current resources, the best use of Australia's specialist health promotion workforce is in ‘upstream’ programs that can benefit the whole population as well as those at risk of Type 2 diabetes. So what Funds for any expansion of health promotion involvement in Type 2 diabetes prevention and/or early intervention programs should come from the services that run these programs, not from the tiny proportion of Australian health expenditure allocated to health promotion.