About us

Health Promotion is a health strategy advocated by the WHO (World Health Organization) in the Ottawa Charter (1986) and the Bangkok Charter (2005). Generally, the Japanese translated term “健康増進/Kenko Zoshin”, would make you think of making people much healthier by encouraging them to exercise, reduce salt intake and quit smoking through health education or the like. However, if you look at the original definition and priority action areas of Health Promotion in Ottawa Charter, you can find the description to be quite different.

Health Promotion is defined as “the process of enabling people to increase control over” the　determinants of health, “and to improve, their health”. The five priority action areas are identified as not only to “Develop Personal Skills”, but also to “Strengthen Community Actions for Health”, “Create Supportive Environments for Health”, “Re-orient Health Services” and “Build Healthy Public Policy”. Thus, the empowerment of individuals is just a part of these actions, and the significance is put on making interventions in various areas such as society, economy, community environments, health services and public policy. Therefore, we intentionally use Japanese description such as “ヘルスプロモーション/ (Health Promotion in Katakana Japanese alphabet)” or “Health Promotion (original English spelling as is)” instead of “健康増進/Kenko Zoshin (general Japanese translation)” when referring to Health Promotion in Japanese for publication of documents on HPH (Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services) and in this website.

The Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services (HPH) is one of the settings that was proposed by WHO to put Health Promotion into practice along with other settings such as Healthy Cities and Health Promoting Schools.

“Re-orient Health Services” is actually feasible by the efforts of us healthcare providers, including medical professionals, healthcare institutions and other health service providers such as clinics, pharmacies, health checkup centers and nursing care facilities. For this, HPH is working to promote the efforts on Preventive cares, Primary Health Care (PHC) and sustainable environment (Green Healthcare) for Patients/Users, Community people and our Staff. Recently, “The Geneva Charter for Well-being” was adopted by the 10th Global Conference on Health Promotion (2021), encouraging the five key action areas including “Address the Impacts of Digital Transformation” and “Value, Respect and Nurture Planet Earth and Its Ecosystems (planetary health)”.

In November 6th – 8th, 2024, we are holding the 30th International Conference on Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services (HPH) in Hiroshima under the theme of “The Contribution of Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services to Health Equity”. The reason why Japan has become the country with the longest life expectancy in the world is believed to be the fruit of actual health promoting efforts that have been long practiced in Japanese society. We would like this international conference to be an opportunity for us to invite many medical institutions, health services, and other health providers to join HPH, as well as for us to review “the process of enabling people to increase control over the determinants of health, and thereby to improve their health” in Japanese society, and publish and share our learnings to the world, so that we may further advance Health Promotion in Japan.

Date of Update: 10 MAY. 2024