Andrew Tannahilll
2008
Citations
3
Influential Citations
29
Citations
Journal
Public health
Abstract
In the mid-1980s, I created a model that presented health promotion as three overlapping spheres of activity: health education, prevention, and health protection (Fig. 1). I had been struck by a leap in vocabulary e from ‘prevention’ and ‘health education’ to ‘health promotion’ e and understood the need to broaden out from the former two traditional terms, but ‘health promotion’ was a term with so many meanings as to be meaningless. The model has been widely cited or adopted. It has been used in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in and beyond the UK, and specimen essays/case studies can be bought through various commercial websites. On the other hand, the model has been described as representing ‘simplistic linguistic juggling’. I have also heard it criticized as not being a model in the sense of a particular approach to health promotion. However, I intended it as a uniting construct rather than the encapsulation of a single ideology, and as a counter to the sterile argument that health promotion and prevention should be seen as separate, even opposing, fields of endeavour (an example of a tendency in public health to waste time, energy and opportunities through a divisive ‘this or that’ mindset, when more would be gained through an integrating