Physiotherapy and Health Promotion
摘要
Physiotherapy has been identified as an “untapped resource” for promoting healthy lifestyles. There is an increasing call for physiotherapists to routinely practice health promotion and illness prevention to help address the global health burden from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). One common health promotion approach increasingly utilized by physiotherapists consists of utilizing the trusted relationships and management time that physiotherapists share with their clients to have health promoting discussions about healthy lifestyle and behavior change. The existing roles of physiotherapists as managers and leaders within the health system provides opportunities to promote changes at organizational and policy levels. The approach of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the contribution of the physiotherapy profession to the discipline of health promotion and provide some principles and guidance for how health promotion can be practiced by physiotherapists. The chapter begins with a summary of how health promotion practice in physiotherapy is perceived and theorized. A case study on falls prevention is presented as an exemplar of how physiotherapists can do health promotion. A narrative review of the literature then explicates how health promotion is being operationalized in contemporary physiotherapy practice and what the educational needs are for physiotherapists to deliver health promotion. The gaps and challenges that exist in this area are critically discussed. To conclude the chapter, a future of health promotion and physiotherapy is proposed.