Explain and apply the five action areas of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion to build resilience as a community resource for a priority health issue

What this dot point is asking

QCAA wants you to know the five action areas of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion cold and apply them to a real community issue. The Ottawa Charter is the central health-promotion framework across the course. In Unit 3 you use it to design or evaluate action that builds resilience as a community resource. "Apply" means you must take a specific priority issue and explain what action under each relevant area would look like, not just define the areas. The strongest responses show that the action areas work together rather than as a checklist.

The answer

Where the Ottawa Charter comes from

The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion was produced by the World Health Organization in 1986. It shifted health promotion away from simply telling people to behave and toward changing the conditions that shape health. It defines health promotion as the process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health. That framing fits Unit 3 perfectly, because building resilience as a community resource is exactly about increasing a community's control over its own health.

The five action areas

1. Build healthy public policy

Health is shaped by decisions made well outside the health sector. Laws, regulations, taxes and organisational policy create the conditions for health. Examples include mandatory seatbelt and helmet laws, graduated licensing for young drivers, and social housing policy. Policy is powerful because it changes the default for everyone at once.

2. Create supportive environments

The physical and social environment should make the healthy choice the easy choice. Safer road design, separated bike lanes, accessible crisis accommodation, and welcoming community spaces all create environments that support resilience.

3. Strengthen community action

Communities identify their own priorities and act on them. This is empowerment from the ground up: local groups, peer networks and community organisations mobilising resources. It is the action area most directly tied to building resilience as a community resource.

4. Develop personal skills

Education and skill-building help people make informed decisions and cope with challenges. This includes hazard-perception training for new drivers, financial literacy for people at risk of homelessness, and help-seeking skills for managing anxiety.

5. Reorient health services

Health services move beyond treatment toward prevention, early intervention and community partnership. Examples include outreach health services for people experiencing homelessness and culturally safe services co-designed with the community.

Why the action areas work together

The big-mark idea is integration. A single action area rarely shifts a population issue on its own. Reducing young-driver road trauma takes policy (graduated licensing), supportive environments (safer roads), community action (local campaigns), personal skills (hazard-perception training) and reoriented services (school-based programs) acting together. When you apply the Charter to a priority issue, show how two or three areas reinforce each other, because that combined effect is what builds durable community resilience.

Applying the Charter in Unit 3

Use the Charter as a planning and evaluation tool. To plan: take your priority issue, work through each action area, and identify realistic action. To evaluate: judge an existing program by which action areas it covers and which it neglects. A program that only develops personal skills (such as a lone awareness poster) is weak because it ignores policy and environment. This evaluative use of the Charter is high-value in the IA1 action research and the examinations.