Building Health Promotion Capacity: Action For Learning, Learning From Action

Building Health Promotion Capacity explores the professional practice of health promotion, and the means through which individuals and organizations become more effective in supporting and undertaking such practice. The concepts of “capacity” and “capacity-building” are used to structure this exploration. Simply put, capacity refers to those qualities or characteristics that enable people to do something.

The book is based on the experiences of the Building Health Promotion Capacity Project (1998–2003), a continuing education and applied research initiative affiliated with the Saskatchewan Heart Health Program. This project was designed to study the process of capacity development through taking action to enhance the health promotion capacity of practitioners and regional health districts in Saskatchewan.

For health promotion practitioners, this book provides a coherent framework for effective professional practice in the field. Leaders in health sector organizations will acquire a greater understanding of how to support health promotion practice and of how to recruit and develop individual practitioners with a high level of capacity. Policy makers will learn characteristics of environments that are supportive of the health promotion capacity of individuals and organizations. Scholars will acquire an understanding of the nature of health promotion capacity and a methodology for studying such capacity.