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In 1953 when the Nordic School of Public Health was founded, the aim of public health programmes was disease prevention more than health promotion. This was not unusual, since at this time health usually was seen as the opposite of disease and illness. However, with the Ottawa Charter of 1986, the World Health Organization made a crucial change to view health not as a goal in itself but as the means to a full life. In this way, health promotion became a first priority and fundamental action for the modern society. This insight eventually reached NHV and in 2002 – 50 years after the foundation – an associate professorship was established with a focus on health promotion. Nevertheless, the concept of health promotion had been integrated with or mentioned in courses run prior to the new post. Subsequently, a wide spectrum of courses in health promotion was introduced, such as ‘Empowerment for Child and Adolescent Health Promotion’, ‘Salutogenesis – from theory to practice’ and ‘Health, Stress and Coping’. More than half of all doctoral theses undertaken at NHV during these years had health promotion as their theme. As a derivative, the Nordic Health Promotion Research Network (NHPRN) was established in 2007 with bi-annual meetings at NHV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scand J Caring Sci; 2011; 25; 798-805 Holism in nursing and health promotion: distinct or related perspectives? - A literature review Background: The concept of holism is central in health promotion as well as in nursing. Holism or a holistic view on health was identified as one of the key principles of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and is linked to social ecology and the determinants of health. Aims: To explore how the term holism was defined and/or described in Nordic articles with a health-promotion approach, and how holism aspects were related to nursing and health promotion, and to the other key principles of the Ottawa Charter. Methods: Abstracts were first identified by the search word 'health promotion' as a keyword. The search was limited to 1986-2008 and abstracts written in English by authors with a Nordic affiliation. Abstracts/articles for this study were subsequently selected from these abstracts using the search words 'holism' and 'holistic' and analysed by quantitative and manifest qualitative content analysis. Findings: The sample included 23 articles: one theoretical, two reviews and 20 empirical studies. Sixteen articles included a hospital setting or nursing perspective. A holistic perspective could be extracted from most articles. No larger but several minor differences were identified in the way holism aspects were related to nursing and health promotion respectively. Conclusion: There is a risk that the individual patient perspective of holism in nursing may result in less chance of reaching larger groups of patients with chronic diseases and mental health problems, not least the most vulnerable ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]