The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion - TCE Health Studies (Tasmania) - Level 3 pre-tertiary
“Explain and apply the five action areas of the Ottawa Charter to health promotion”
The Ottawa Charter, released by the World Health Organization in 1986, is the foundation framework for modern health promotion. It defines health promotion as the process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health. It sets out five action areas: build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community action, develop personal skills, and reorient health services. Used together, these areas shift the focus from treating illness toward creating the social conditions for good health.
What this dot point is asking
This dot point asks you to know the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, name and explain its five action areas, and apply them to real health issues. You need to move beyond listing the areas to showing how each one works and why combining them produces stronger, more lasting results than any single approach.
Background and the meaning of health promotion
Before the Ottawa Charter, much health work focused on treating disease and encouraging individuals to change their behaviour. The Charter marked a shift toward a social model of health. It recognised that health is created where people live, learn, work and play, and that the prerequisites for health include peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice and equity. Health promotion, on this view, is about acting on those conditions, not just informing individuals.
Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It works on the determinants of health and combines individual and structural action rather than relying on personal behaviour change alone.
The five action areas
The heart of this dot point is the five action areas. Learn each one with a clear example.
- Build healthy public policy: governments and organisations make decisions that protect and promote health, such as taxing tobacco, mandating seatbelts or requiring nutrition labelling. Policy shapes the environment for whole populations.
- Create supportive environments: shape physical and social surroundings so that healthy choices are easier, for example safe cycling paths, smoke free venues and workplaces that support mental wellbeing.
- Strengthen community action: empower communities to set priorities, make decisions and act on issues that matter to them, such as a local group running a youth mental health initiative.
- Develop personal skills: provide health information, education and life skills so individuals can make informed choices, for example school based drug education or cooking programs.
- Reorient health services: move the health system beyond clinical treatment toward prevention, early intervention and partnership with communities, so resources are shared across promotion and care.
The three strategies
The Charter also describes three broad strategies that run across the action areas: advocate (create the conditions favourable to health), enable (give all people the resources and opportunity to reach their potential), and mediate (coordinate action between government, community, industry and other sectors). When you analyse a campaign, you can show how it advocates for change, enables people to act, and mediates between different groups.
Build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community action, develop personal skills, and reorient health services. A useful memory cue is the phrase that links Building, Creating, Strengthening, Developing and Reorienting.
Why combining action areas matters
The Charter is most powerful when several action areas work together. Consider reducing smoking. Healthy public policy raises tobacco prices and bans advertising. Supportive environments make most public spaces smoke free. Community action supports local quit groups. Personal skills are built through education and quitline services. Reoriented health services offer brief intervention and nicotine support. No single area would achieve the same fall in smoking rates as the combination. Strong responses explain this layering rather than treating the areas as a checklist.
Applying the Charter in assessment
When a question gives you a health issue, choose two or three action areas that fit, name a realistic intervention for each, and explain how it acts on the determinants of health. Link your answer to equity by asking whether the action reaches the groups with the greatest need. Examiners reward responses that justify why particular action areas suit the issue, not just responses that recite all five.
A high-tariff question gives you an issue and asks you to apply and justify several action areas. Work through it in this order so the layering is explicit.
Choose the issue and the fitting action areas
State the issue, for example reducing smoking, and select the action areas that fit best: build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, and develop personal skills. Choosing rather than listing all five shows judgement.
Name a realistic intervention for each area
Build healthy public policy: raise tobacco taxes and ban advertising. Create supportive environments: make public spaces smoke free. Develop personal skills: quitline and school education. Each intervention should be concrete and tied to the determinants of health.
Show how the areas reinforce one another
Explain the layering: policy raises price and removes advertising, supportive environments make the smoke free choice the default, and personal skills help individuals quit within that environment. No single area would achieve the same fall in smoking alone.
Link to equity and conclude
Close by checking whether the combined action reaches high need groups, so it narrows rather than widens inequity, and conclude that combining action areas is more effective than any single approach.
A frequent error is treating develop personal skills as the only real action area and describing every intervention as education. The Charter deliberately balances individual skill building with structural action through policy, environments and community. Always include at least one structural action area so your answer reflects the social model of health.
The Ottawa Charter is the lens you will return to across the course, because almost every health promotion strategy can be analysed and evaluated through its five action areas and three strategies.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice5 marksName the five action areas of the Ottawa Charter and briefly explain the meaning of each.Show worked answer →
A 5 mark response needs all five action areas named and explained, about one mark each.
- Build healthy public policy
- Governments and organisations make decisions that protect and promote health, such as taxing tobacco or mandating seatbelts.
- Create supportive environments
- Shape physical and social surroundings so healthy choices are easier, for example safe cycling paths and smoke free venues.
- Strengthen community action
- Empower communities to set priorities and act on issues that matter to them, such as a local youth mental health initiative.
- Develop personal skills
- Provide information, education and life skills so individuals can make informed choices, for example school drug education.
- Reorient health services
- Move the system beyond clinical treatment toward prevention, early intervention and partnership with communities.
Markers reward all five named accurately with a brief, correct explanation of each.
Practice9 marksUsing a contemporary health issue, explain how three of the Ottawa Charter action areas could be combined to address it, and justify why combining action areas is more effective than a single approach.Show worked answer →
A 9 mark response needs a named issue, three action areas applied with realistic interventions, and a justification of the combined approach.
- Frame the issue (about 1 mark)
- Take reducing smoking, a clear population health issue.
- Apply three action areas (about 6 marks, about 2 each)
- Build healthy public policy: raise tobacco prices and ban advertising. Create supportive environments: make most public spaces smoke free. Develop personal skills: education and quitline services that build the skills to quit. Name a realistic intervention for each and link it to the determinants of health.
- Justify combining areas (about 2 marks)
- Argue that no single area achieves the same fall in smoking as the combination: policy changes the environment, supportive environments make the healthy choice easier, and personal skills help individuals act within that environment. Check that the actions reach high need groups so equity improves.
Markers reward action areas matched to realistic interventions and an explained justification of layering, not a recital of all five areas.